‘Nowadays they don’t do pastizzi like we do anymore’

When she was 13 years old, Maria Mifsud would help her mother make pastizzi using the cheeselets prepared earlier after milking the goats in their family farm. Six decades later, Maria – now 72 – is still making the same round cupcake-shaped cheesecakes using the exact same recipe.

The only difference is that she now makes them with her son, his wife and her grandson. Together they make 100 dozen pastizzi every morning – before the sun rises – to cope with the high demand at their Rabat restaurant, Peristyle.

Video: Matthew Mirabelli

Maria, however, is now concerned that as she grows tired and contemplates retirement, this labour-intensive family tradition will end with her. “It is a lot of hard work. I just hope that, when I am gone, this tradition will continue. I am getting tired, but I hope that my mother’s recipe will continue,” she chuckles.

Over the past decades, the Peristyle pastizzi have become well known, with many heading to the Rabat restaurant from all parts of the island – and beyond. “I recently was contacted by a woman in Canada who said she is coming to Malta in February and wants to see me make pastizzi,” Maria says.

Maria recounts how she was the fourth of...