Pig's stomach costs Lm1.60 per kilo. Bernard Muscat's wine recommendation: this dish has lots of body but not a strong flavour, so match it to a Chilean Chardonnay from Montes (2005), from Paolo Bonnici.
For 8 people, you will need:
For the minestra: some Maltese celery (karfus), two large potatoes (scraped and chopped), three carrots (scraped and diced), 350g of courgettes (diced), a large onion (peeled and chopped), sea-salt and black pepper, a small kohlrabi (ġidra – peeled and chopped), 50g of tomato pulp,
400g of pumpkin (rind removed; chopped), two litres of water,
350g of squash (qargħa safra – rind removed; chopped), optional – a chicken or vegetable stock cube (use homemade stock if you have it to hand).
To prepare the stomach: a pig’s stomach (cleaned and trimmed by your butcher; you might need to order it beforehand), 750g of minced pork, two fresh eggs (beaten), 100g of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, two slices of stale white bread soaked in milk, two hard-boiled eggs (shell removed), salt and black pepper, cooking-oil.
Wash the stomach thoroughly in plenty of salted water. Mix together the minced pork, beaten eggs, soaked bread, cheese, salt and pepper. Stuff the stomach with this, placing the hard boiled eggs in the middle. Sew up the stomach using a sewing-needle and strong cotton. Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Add the vegetables, tomato pulp, stock or stock cube, and some salt and pepper. Bring the pot back to the boil, then turn the heat right down and put in the stuffed stomach. Leave the pot to simmer for an hour. Now carefully remove the stomach from the minestra, put it into a baking-dish, brush it with oil and season it with salt and pepper. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4½/180C and bake the stomach for an hour. Leave the soup to simmer for the same amount of time. Remove the stomach from the oven and let it stand for 15 minutes before slicing it to serve it. Do this in the kitchen, in a large dish that can catch the juices which ooze out. Serve it with baked potatoes, and with the minestra as a first course.
