This year’s edition of Notte Bianca will host what will possibly be the largest ever street food operation ever witnessed in Malta, and easily the most unusual one.
The large pop-up kitchen that is set to serve thousands of passers-by at Castille Place on the night of October 4 will not be serving standard fare, but original recipes using local ingredients thought up and perfected by a team of 20 cooks with no prior experience in a professional kitchen, including a number in their early teens.
L-Ikla t-Tajba, as the project is known, is one of the projects included in the Valletta 2018 Foundation’s application for the title of European Capital of Culture in 2018, and is the brainchild of chef David Darmanin, who is presently based abroad but who has spent a considerable part of the summer in Malta to bring the project to fruition.
Mr Darmanin emphasises that the Notte Bianca event is merely “the last step of the first phase” of a project which, he hopes, will only grow further in the future.
The plans for this first phase were fleshed out last June; the next step was the recruitment of the amateur chefs.
The twenty that ended up forming part of the project have little in common save for an interest in cooking. Their ages range from 13 to 55: the teenagers include top students and others with learning difficulties. Some participants come from a privileged background, others less so.
As it turns out, such an eclectic mix was deliberately sought out; Mr Darmanin points out that diversity can encourage the creativity which is essential to the project.
“But we also wanted to prove, to the participants and to the public at large, that food brings people together, not just outside of the kitchen but also inside it.”
Mr Darmanin argues that a kitchen is an ideal place to bring people together, stating that a well-run kitchen brigade is a purely meritocratic environment, where social distinctions melt away as “we’re all wearing whites.”
The kitchen has its own hierarchy, inevitably, but Mr Darmanin points out that everyone has the opportunity to move up the ladder, based on their performance.
“If you make a mistake you will get flak, whoever you may be… and if you do well, you are rewarded,” he remarks.
The training
Training was essential if the group was to work smoothly in such a large kitchen, and this came in the form of workshops, spread over a month and a half, in a home economics lab at the Archbishop’s Seminary.
Professional kitchens are hectic by nature, and accordingly, the training process was far from easy.
“This wasn’t a course where we’d pamper participants. It was one where we told them ‘look, this is how a kitchen works; it’s tough, and if you don’t like it this isn’t for you.’ And we have lost some dead weight in the process,” Mr Darmanin acknowledges.
What was left, he adds, was a “tight and extremely dedicated” group.
The workshops focused on basic culinary techniques: “there’s only so much you can do in a month and a half,” Mr Darmanin explains. But they also focused on the creative side of cooking: the participants did have to come up with signature dishes, after all.
The team were also signed up for a food handling course: as a result, they are all qualified to work in a professional kitchen, should they wish to do so.
Mr Darmanin confirms that a number of them – particularly younger members of the team – have actually shown an interest in making a career out of cooking.
The creative process
The cooks were all tasked to create signature dishes using only local ingredients, as is appropriate for an initiative that seeks to promote food culture.
“We often tend to disregard the potential of some local ingredients that happen to be prized ingredients of a very high quality and which are highly available, and buy crap instead” Mr Darmanin explains.
How to use these local ingredients, however, was entirely up to the cooks, who were encouraged to develop signature dishes that represented them as individuals.
A participant of Asian origin, for instance, came up with a reinterpretation of a popular staple of many Asian cuisines which also happens to be very popular in Malta: a spring roll, only with a lampuki filling, and with a tomato and caper dipping sauce.
Another recipe that made the cut was by one of the youngest participants, who decided to mark the 50thanniversary of independence from Britain in a tongue-in-cheek manner with a Maltese version of the traditional Cornish pasty, using rabbit stew as stuffing.
“I’m not sure if the English would appreciate it, but it will surely go down well with the Maltese,” Mr Darmanin observes.
But the creation process was not simply about creating food that tastes good, but about creating practical street food, which can be feasibly produced in large quantities and sold at an affordable price.
“You obviously have to keep the price low. It’s not a matter of choosing an ingredient and then finding the lowest price for it… you choose a fresh ingredient that is available in plentiful amounts at the time, which will mean that the price will be lower,” Mr Darmanin explains.
Everything that will be sold in Notte Bianca will be produced from scratch: nothing is being bought in.
The nature of the event – and the size of the team – does allow for recipes that take some time to prepare, however.
The team is set to spend two and a half days to prepare for the event; four international chefs – three Italians and a British street food specialist – will be coming over to supervise the process. All four have worked with Mr Darmanin, ensuring that there would be no problems with team dynamics, and have accepted to help at a very advantageous rate – as Mr Darmanin had done.
“We’re certainly not doing this for the money, it would not be worth it, but it’s a beautiful process because people have put their hearts and souls into it,” he remarks.
The next steps?
If all goes to plan, the Notte Bianca event will not be the end of L-Ikla t-Tajba. What happens next, however, depends in part on the way the event pans out.
“I cannot speak on behalf of Valletta 2018… but I know that there is a lot of excitement for the project. What I know is that after the event is over, we will need to sit down and carry out a proper post-mortem,” Mr Darmanin explains.
One thing that is already known, he points out, is that the training has been a considerable expense: the participants were not asked to pay, to ensure that the project has a social dimension to it. Transport and childcare were also provided at no cost where required.
“So although we’re selling the food, and the sales will definitely help, the project so far is not yet something that is financially feasible, as any project should be,” he adds.
However, Mr Darmanin points out that there is a great potential for securing other funding streams, including EU funding, the private sector, and even within the government.
Of course, it doesn’t help that an initiative of this type is new to Malta. For instance, installing pop-up kitchens in other parts of the world simply involves sending a request to a company which takes care of everything; the team will have no such luxury.
So will the project lead to a revolution when it comes to Maltese street food? Perhaps, perhaps not, Mr Darmanin answers; such things take time.
He does note, however, that the Maltese are quick to change once they decide to change, and while he notes that Maltese street food may get a lot of flak, he disagrees that the street food scene is poor.
“Now that I live abroad, I know what it feels like to be missing pastizzi and mqaret… the little we have that is typically Maltese is excellent,” he notes.
In time, perhaps even with the contribution of L-Ikla t-Tajba, there will be other excellent local fares overseas Maltese will start missing.
The Valletta 2018 Foundation is looking for volunteers to help out the chefs and cooks in the preparation and set-up, at the cash point, in the distribution of leaflets and in the dissemination of information to the public.
Interested individuals are invited to contact the foundation by sending an email to [email protected] or by calling 2124 2018 by Friday, 26 September. An induction meeting for volunteers will take place on 30 September at 5:30pm.