Sardinian Cuisine

Sardinian Cuisine

Some ideas for the Sardinian cuisine or some cooking class.
The traditional Sardinian cuisine is well known for its simple, but very tasty recipes. When you travel around the island you see animals bred in the wild, as still nowadays this is the most typical way to raise animals rather than keeping them in a farm.

Traditional meals have always been prepared with the basic ingredients that grow in the fields or are bred in the grazing lands of the island.

Anyway we must not forget that since Carthaginian times Sardinia was used as an important barn and we still produce wheat and have different types of pasta. The most famous are Frugula, Culurgionis, Malloreddus, Origliettas... They all have different shapes and sizes and usually are served with tomato sauce.  Zuppa quatta is also a typical first course, but only in Gallura region; it looks like Lasagne but tastes different, because it is prepared with bread, meat broth and a lot of cheese.

There is no festival or party on the island without porcetto arrosto - roasted suckling piglet - with myrtle scent. The tastiest one is roasted over an open fire for at least 5 hours: it’s a habit that Sardinian people have always practised whenever there is an important event to celebrate.

Also lamb meat takes part in the traditional menu, but it is less common than pork. Sheep meat – or mutton -  is on the other hand an original speciality of the countryside and it is usually prepared with potatoes and onions and called pecora bollita. When it is cooked with tomatoes, rosemary, a bit of wine and many other spices is called pecora in umido.

Sardinia is legendary for sheep cheese and we breed more than 3 million sheep of the Sardinian breed. Cheese production is an important item of the local economy and if Naples is the homeland for pizza, Sardinia is for the seasoned sheep cheese: pecorino sardo . Of course we produce many other cheeses with caw or goat milk.

According to tradition fish and seafood didn’t belong to the Sardinian economy, but there are now some areas that are famous for delicious recipes. In Alghero on the west coast you find delicious lobsters Catalana style. In Oristano where there are many wetlands fishermen produce Bottarga (mullet‘s roe) that has been nicknamed „The Mediterranean caviar“. Mussels are also bred in 3 different places and seafood risotto are prepared in restaurant mostly near the sea..

Every part of the island has a different type of bread, but the most well known remains  Carasau bread - a very thin layer of bread baked mainly for the shepherds when they used to stay away from home for long periods. The bread remains crunchy and tasty for a long time, even for a couple of months.

You can ask your guide to watch the production, or how to make it yourself. Every important lunch or dinner finishes with a dessert. Just to name some of them: amaretti, papassini, copulettas. The majority of the local cakes are made from almond pastry as these trees grow everywhere. Some biscuits are also filled with saba  - concentrated must from grape - and orange rind, but the best known Sardinian dessert is seadas - a fried thin pastry filled with cheese and honey topping.

There is no region in Italy that does not produce excellent wines. Sardinia is not an exception and the choice improves from year to year. Red and white wines have been produced for centuries while rosé ones are a superb answer to a foreign demand. A symbolic red wine for the whole island is Cannonau D.O.C.. Vermentino di Gallura white wine is the only D.O.C.G Sardinian wine and is produced in the northeast.

Local liquors are a must after a flavourful meal: Limoncello, Mirto and Fil e Ferru  are the most common. Myrtle is made from berries or leaves of the bush  Myrtus Communis that grows in the Mediterranean scrub, while Fil e Ferru  is a spirit whose translation is „iron wire“.

Now I explain to you why; when very high taxes were introduced for home made spirit production, people started to do it secretly. The bottles with spirit were then hidden under the soil and the people used to sign the exact place with a piece of iron wire in order to find it quickly again. So that when somebody wanted to buy the spirit, he simply used to ask for some “iron wire” without anybody noticing.

Last but not least..... Sardinian beer Ichnusa that has been produced since 1912. Cheers !!!

In the section THEME TOURS you can find a tour named TRADITIONAL SARDINIAN FOOD designed to make an interesting visit of the island and at the same time to taste the best local recipes.