EATING IN SARDINIA

1. EATING IN SARDINIA

2. Seasoned bread – Pani frattau Put boiling salted water in a wide skillet, dip pieces of “music paper in it, then place them in a plate where you had previously put some tomato sauce, minced meat, parsley, garlic and onion. Pour this sauce on the first layer of bread adding some grated pecorino cheese. Go on until the plate is full. Put on the top a poached egg, break and blend it with the bread. Serve inindividual plates. Music paper – pane carasau Mix flour, semolina and yeast in tepid water, make a ball of medium consistency, coat it with flour and keep it warm under a cloth. Leave it to rise for 1 night. Divide the dough into medium-sized balls and when risen roll the dough into thin sheets, put them one upon the other and press for some hours so they can’t arise. They are ready to be cooked when put into the oven the sheet blows and separates into 2 surfaces . Bake the sheets, remove them from the oven and separate the 2 surfaces gently making a pile. Put a weight on so that the sheets remain stretched and don’t crumple up. When they are cool, bake them again until they are nice and crisp. Typical bread

3. Little dumplings – malloreddus Mix 500 gms. of fine semolina with tepid water and salt, till it gets a rather hard consistency. Remove a piece of dough and add a pinch of saffron, then form many 1 cm. long sticks and press them with your thumbs on a basket made of dry hay stalks so that they can roll up on themselves and appear ribbed outside. Cook them in salted boiling water and season with a sauce made with fresh tomato and fresh Sardinian sausage. Agnolotti filled with potatoes and cheese – culingionis de patata Cook 1,500 kilograms of potatoes, peel and smash them. Mix the mash with grated dry sour salted cheese. Add onions fried in beef fat, 1 clove of garlic and chopped mint. Form little balls and put them on a dough made with 300 gms. of flour with slightly salted tepid water. Give each disk a cone form, shaping the edges as an ear of corn. Cook them and season with grated pecorino cheese or with tomato sauce. FIRST COURSES

4. Ravioli filled with swiss chard – culingionis de era Grate 1 kg of slightly sour fresh cheese or ricotta cheese, add a pinch of salt, 3 eggs, 1 kg of boiled swiss chard, a pinch of saffron diluted in water and 4 or 5 tablespoons of flour. Form nut-like pellets. Then prepare a dough with 200 gms of semolina, 200 gms of flour and tepid water with a pinch of salt. Roll it into 2 thin sheets and place the pellets on them. Turn the sheets over the filling pellets and, after pressing the 2 sheets one on the other, cut the individual ravioli with a half-moon pastry wheel. Cook the next day in boling salted water and season with tomato sauce and Sardinian grated cheese. Eel pie – panada de anguiddas Prepare a dough with 500 gms of flour, 150 gms ogf lard and water, roll out a sheet of dough and with it line the base of a greased deep bowl, so to have the dough up the sides of it. Pound some dried tomatoes and place a layer of raw eels on it. Prepare several layers and finish sprinkling some oil and ½ glass of water on the lot. Roll out another sheet of dough, cover the layers with it , remove the excess dough and roll the edges of the dough inwards. Pierce the surface of the pie with a toothpick and bake. FIRST COURSES

5. Fish soup – Sa cassola You need some assorted fish: octopus, cuttlefish, gilt-head bream, eeel and possibly some shore crabs (about 1,500 kg). Fry 1 sliced onion and 2 or 3 cloves of garlic in some tablespoons of oil. Add 500gms of peeled tomatoes without seeds, 1 tip of hot chilly, salt and pepper. Cook for a few minutes and then add the fish, first of all the octopus and cuttlefish, which need to be cooked for a longer time. Leave to simmer slowly and serve with toasted bread slices. Dogfish with walnuts – Sa burrida Cut 2 or 3 dogfish into pieces. Skin, slice and boil them in salted water together with their liver. Then pound the boiled liver with 5 or 6 walnuts and fry in olive oil 2 cloves of chopped garlic and parsley; add the pounded liver and walnuts. Cook for a little and later add it hot to the fish. When it is cool, prepare a sauce with 1 tablespoon of white vinegar, and 2 tablespoons of bread crumbs. Then pur it on the fish. Leave it to rest in a covered pan for at least 12 hours to get tastier. SECOND COURSES - FISH

6. Lamb or pork stew with potatoes – Ghisau e patatas Melt 1 tablespoon of lard, fry 1 finely sliced onion in it. When the onion gets a golden colour, add about 1 kg of lamb or pork cut into pieces (for 6 people). Add salt and mix every now and then until the meat is half done. Then take the meat out of the pan and put 6 potatoes cut into pieces in it, adding water, salt and tomato sauce. When the potatoes are half cooked, put in the meat again adding a pinch of pepper. Cook till it is done and serve it hot. Pig on skewer – porceddu a su schironi First of all, scrape the skin of the pig and scorch the bristles, then wash and clean the meat, skew it and place it 50 cm over a fire made with special wood (holm-oak, juniper), that gives the meat a special aroma.At first keep only the chest of the animal towards the fire and only when it is nearly done, start turning round the skewer, add salt and leave to drip on the meat a piece of lard previously put in the skewer and heated on a flame to melt. Serve it cut into pieces on cork trays SECOND COURSES - MEAT

7. Buried wild boar – sirboni a carraxu Dig a pit as big as to contain the wild boar and heat it with a fire of dried wood. Remove the ash, clean the pit and line its bottom with stalks of thyme, myrtle and other aromatic herbs. Lay down the skinned and cut wild boar, cover it with other aromatic herbs and a thin layer of earth, where you have to lit a big fire. The boar is ready after a few hours. Thrush with myrtle – Pillonis de taccula Pluck the necessary amount of thrushes, flame and wash them. Then dip the birds into salted water without removing their offals. Tie together eight of them at a time with a stalk passed round their beaks; when done, before they get cold, place them in cloth bags full of myrtle. Eat them cool. They can be kept for several days. Second courses - meat

8. Artichokes in sauce – canciofa cun patatas Trim away the outer tough leaves of 6 rather big artichokes and wash them carefully. Fry 1/2 sliced onion in 2-3 tablespoons of oil. Add the artichokes and leave them to cook for about 15 minutes, adding some water if necessary. When they are half done add ½ glass of tomato sauce and 7-8 potatoes cut into pieces. Cook on a low flame, adding 1 some chopped parsley, salt and pepper. Fava broad beans – Faiada Leave 500 gms of fava broad beans in tepid water overnight. The following day cut their peel lengthways, season them with 500 gms of pork, 300 gms of cotechino sausage, 300 gms of pork-rind, 1 tablespoon of lard chopped with 2 or 3 cloves of garlic and salt. Cover the pan and cook until done VEGETABLES

9. Wild fennel soup – Suppa de finigheddu aresti Put 1 kg of wild fennels coarsely cut into abundant boiling salted water. In an earthenware pan arrange a layer of toasted bread squares, a layer of fresh cheese and a layer of fennels. Prepare many layers in this way. Cover with some of the fennels’ cooking water and bake. Serve very hot Stuffed egg-plant – perdingianu in teglia Cut into halves 6 rather big egg-plants. Sprinkle salt over so they loose their bitter taste. In the meanwhile, put in a bowl 7-8 ripe tomatoes (peeled, without seeds and cut into pieces), together with 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, some basil leaves, abundant oil and pepper. After some hours, wash the egg-plants to remove the salt and with the tip of a knife, cut the flesh lengthways. Put the prepared stuffing into these cuts, dust with breadcrumbs, season with a drop of oil and bake in the hot oven for about 40 minutes VEGETABLES

10. Cheese fritters – Sebadas Mix together 1 kilo of flour, 100 gms of lard and tepid slightly salted water. Knead 100 gms of grated fresh cheese, adding some chopped fresh mint. Shape it into medium sized balls, then flatten them till they are as big as a tea-plate. Roll out a sheet of dough and place the round shaped pieces of cheese on it, cover with another sheet of dough and press it all round the cheese. Cut out these disks with a pastry wheel. Fry them in hot boiling oil and serve with melted honey on top Almond sighs – Sospirus Beat 4 eggs-whites until stiff, then little by little add 300 gms of sugar and 2 tablespoons of sweet peeled and chopped almonds. Mix only the necessary time to blend the ingredients. Butter a baking tray and dust flour on it.Put the mixture with a table spoon on the baking tray, giving each table spoon the shape of an egg. Leave some distance between each of them as they rise durig cooking. Bake in slightly hot oven for half an hour. Desserts