A healing cookbook bridging Malta's folk food traditions and central European farm cooking is one step from the table - and a crowdfunding campaign on Zaar aims to help it print in time for the 2026 Malta Book Festival.

Nourish and Heal from the Farm Kitchen is the work of Elle Bonello Azzopardi, a Maltese-born author who lives and works on a regenerative farm in Bína, Slovakia, with her partner, Zara. The book brings together the Maltese culinary and folk medicine tradition of her childhood and the Slovak farming tradition of her adopted home.

Across 17 chapters that follow the four seasons of the farm year, the 118,000-word cookbook includes 115 recipes covering fermentation, bone broth, foraging, cured and smoked meats, animal fats and raw dairy, seasonal preservation, and the medicinal properties of herbs and traditional foods.

Each recipe also includes a healing note that explains the nutritional and clinical evidence behind the preparation - making the case that the food wisdom of Malta and central Europe can stand up to modern scrutiny. The book is dedicated to Mária, Zara's grandmother, with the aim of preserving her knowledge of traditional food preparation for generations to come. With the illustrated cookbook complete and ready for publication, Elle's crowdfunding campaign on local platform Zaar aims to raise the €5,000 needed to professionally design and typeset its almost 600 pages, print the first run of physical copies, and launch it at the Malta Book Festival in November this year. Nourish and Heal from the Farm Kitchen is Elle's second book, following A Practical Guide to sustainable living: An introduction to permaculture, which was critically reviewed by Professor John Peter Portelli.

"If you have ever believed that real food heals, that what your grandmother cooked was not unhealthy but essential, or that the table is one of the most important places in any life, this book is for you," says Elle. "Printing this cookbook to the standard these recipes deserve is something I cannot do without the help of the community. Crowdfunding felt like the natural route because this book belongs to the people it was written for. Every contribution, large or small, brings this book one step closer to the table."

Supporters can choose from a range of rewards according to the amount they donate before the crowdfunding campaign closes at the end of this month. These include a digital copy of the cookbook with exclusive farm recipes, signed hardcover editions, inclusion in the acknowledgements, private kitchen consultations with Elle, and curated bundles of produce from the farm itself.

Support the crowdfunding campaign to print 'Nourish and Heal from the Farm Kitchen' at www.zaar.com.mt