Maltese Hen Devises Plan to Incubate Ġbejna

The Great Egg-xodus From Senglea to Gozo

Once upon a time, in the heart of Senglea, there lived a hen named Karmena with ambitions larger than the Mdina bastions. Karmena, with feathers as golden as pastizzi crust, was not your average clucker. No siree, she was the Houdini of hens, famous for her Great Egg-xodus. Her claim to fame? Incubating the most surprising of items. This time, she’d set her sights on something grander – ġbejna, Malta’s beloved sheep’s cheese.

The Hatching of a Cheesy Plan

“Uwejja! Imma this time, I’ll make ġbejna that’ll be famous from Valletta to Victoria,” Karmena clucked excitedly to her bewildered coop-mates.

“Imagine, ġbejna so sumptuous, so perfectly ripe – tourists will flock for it like pigeons at St. George’s Square!”

Her coop-mates rolled their eyes. The last time Karmena tried something similar, they ended up in a sticky situation involving molasses and the local festa’s towering pole, known to locals as ‘il-ġostra.’

The Quest for the Perfect Recipe

Undeterred, Karmena set out on a Maltese odyssey. She crossed perilous country roads, dodged swerving Tal-Linja buses, and waddled past verdant fields of luscious tomatoes and plump zgħugħ.

Her first stop was at the grand gates of Rabat. Here, an elderly man named Salvu, known for his award-winning ħobż biż-żejt, imparted the first secret – “To make cheese rival the Knights’ treasures, one must begin with the freshest of milk!”

Karmena nodded thoughtfully. She knew just the goat for the job – Ġanni, a notorious billy goat from Gozo with a milk mustache that rivaled Tom Selleck’s and a bleat that could be heard across the Mediterranean.

The Milk Mustache and The Hairy Situation

Upon reaching Gozo, Karmena realized that procuring the milk would be trickier than she anticipated. Ġanni, behaving true to his capricious nature, mistook our feathered heroine for a feral qbajjar grass and chased her through the echoing streets of Xlendi.

“Kollox sew, my dear Ġanni! I need your milk, not your antics!” Karmena squawked, leading to an awkward moment of realization for the goat. Ġanni, moved by Karmena’s quest, offered his best milk with one condition: that the final ġbejna product would boast his distinguished mustache on the label.

The Incubation Sensation

True to her word, Karmena began incubating the milk right under Ġanni’s watchful eyes. Days turned into nights, tourists came and went, yet the hen remained steadfast on her clutch of future cheese. Whisperings flew across the islands like a warm Sirocco breeze, “The hen from Senglea is up to something!”

The Final Reveal – A Peck-tacular Success!

The morning of the unveiling, a crowd amassed near Karmena’s coop. With a dramatic flutter, she stepped off her nest, revealing what would go down in Maltese lore as the ‘Eighth Wonder’ – the perfectly ripened, irresistibly creamy, mustachioed ġbejna.

“Behold!” Karmena clucked triumphantly, “The Gozo Ġbejniet ta’ Ġanni! Feast your horns, I mean eyes, on this delectable delight!”

The event was meteoric. Families picnicked, children danced the ‘Ħaż-Żebbuġ shuffle’, and the ‘Ġanni-stached’ ġbejna was tasted. It was love at first bite; the peculiar cheese sensation had taken Malta by storm.

Post-Pecking Prosperity

And so, Karmena’s dream came true. From that day forth, every Maltese household served Ġanni-stached ġbejna. Our heroic hen even graced the Divizia tal-Ambjent’s newsletter as an honorary member for championing local agriculture with her feathery ingenuity.

Concluding Clucks

As the Sun set over the Mediterranean, reflecting off the sturdy bastions and tranquil sea, the tale of Karmena and her whimsical cheesemaking endeavours became etched into Maltese folklore, whispered by the old and sung by the young, a story as timeless as the stones of Ħaġar Qim.

“Mela, who would have thought that all it took was one hen’s dream to hatch a culinary revolution?”

Surely, not the skeptical coop-mates from Senglea.