Now that the festive season is over, I’d like to reflect on one of the main elements of this popular time of the year…food. Whenever we visit another country, one of the best ways to get an intimate knowledge of the culture is by savouring the food of that region.
When I visit a country, I always make it a point to eat traditional dishes. This allows me to get a very real feel for a place and a deeper understanding for the culture and the people.
In Malta, we can find food that is popular in the Mediterranean region. There are great Italian influences in the cuisine; thus pizza and pasta are very popular and readily-available. Being an island, fish is also abundant, with many restaurants offering a vast choice of different fish dishes. Meats which are popular are horse meat and rabbit, as well as beef and chicken. These meats can be found in a number of dishes, all of which are prepared with local vegetables, which can also be found in other Mediterranean countries.
Malta boasts a large selection of local wines as well as its very own beer, water and soft drink – definitely not to be given a miss to help wash down the great food on offer.
However food in Malta is not only that which is typical of the region. The Islands are lucky to have a number of culinary influences which were brought to Malta by migrants – we can find food from India, China, Turkey, Japan, Eastern Europe, northern and central Africa, south America, and the USA, to mention the most popular.
Thus a visit to Malta, for a language course with Elite Learning, could also be a visit into a world of culinary delights from all over the world. Enjoy a buffet breakfast with delights from many different countries – local fruit, home-made pastries, traditional sausages, just to mention a very small selection. Later in the day enjoy a well-deserved working lunch with the trainer, where you can choose from a selection of soup, pasta, meat – and practice your social English at the same time. What better way to improve your linguistic skills.
Food, like language, helps to connect people and allow them to get to know and understand each other. We all agree that being able to communicate in English allows us to communicate with the world. Similarly, savouring different cuisines allows us an insight into a culture, despite the fact that we may all be speaking English around the table.
Bon appétit! (for lack of a better term in English – how ironic, don’t you think?)