Three generations,
one recipe.
from our family table to yours
Pastizzi was the smell of Sunday mornings. Nanna's kitchen in Valletta, the radio on, the bench dusted with flour, a tray of golden pastry cooling on the windowsill.
She taught my mum, and my mum taught me. There was never a written recipe — only "a bit more pepper", "until it looks right", and "fold like this, not like that". When we moved to the Sunshine Coast in the late nineties we thought we were leaving it all behind. Turns out you can pack a recipe in your hands.
A house always full of people
Friends, family, neighbours we hadn't met yet — if you knocked on the door, there was tea and a pastizzi waiting. We never thought of pastizzi as a business. They were how we said hello.
Then a café in Mooloolaba asked if they could sell a few. Then another. Then the markets called. Twenty years on, we're still rolling pastry by hand — only now, there's a lot more of it.
The same recipe. Just more hands.
Our kids stand on the same chair Nanna stood on. We roll, we stretch, we fold. We refuse to use machines for the lamination — they bruise the dough.
Saħħa — good health. That's what we say when a tray comes out of the oven. It's what we mean every time someone tells us, "tastes just like my nanna's".
"I still ask my mum if the pastry feels right. Some things, you don't outgrow."
