An enterprising woman takes on the traditional savory snack found in tea shops all across the island of Malta.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00My father tells me how he remembers his mother making pastitsi early in the morning and then
00:12everyone used to go to the same bakery and they used to bake them for them and they would
00:17be ready for breakfast by the time the kids woke up.
00:27My name is Mary Louvella, Director and Pastitsara at Pastitsigone.
00:33Hopefully in a few years time I'll have my own little shop and then eventually my dream
00:39which is a tea house.
00:46I started because I did not have a job and I thought what can I do by myself that I can
00:53make some money from and that I actually enjoy doing.
00:56And I started selling pastitsi to my friends, nearly everyone at first thought it was a
01:01joke.
01:02Eventually word started to spread and after around 8-9 months I realised there was a lot
01:08of potential in it so I decided to focus on it full time.
01:16The pastry looks different because the traditional pastitsi have a layer of lard between every
01:22layer of pastry whereas I don't, I work everything together.
01:28And I also make a lot of different fillings, traditional pastitsi only have ricotta and
01:32pea and I make around 15 or 16 different fillings.
01:37There's ricotta, there's pea with anchovies and olives, there's lamb and then there are
01:43the sweet ones.
01:50When I was a little girl I used to bake them a lot with my grandmother and my auntie.
01:54She used to make pastitsi very often, she was a genius in the kitchen.
01:59I really wish that she was still alive now just so I could show her what's happening
02:04with pastitsi and gourmet.