The unique flavours of Sardinia
More and more often, when we travel abroad, lounging on the beach and package excursions are no longer enough, and we look for local "flavours". Sardinia revealed several of its culinary secrets to me. These were products that are often made only on this island, the second largest in the Mediterranean. In some cases, the tradition of making them has survived in just a few families from a single town. Their taste, texture, production method and consistency are often part of the centuries-old heritage of the proud islanders and fit into Sardinia's broad cultural context.
Carasau Shepherd's Bread
Getting to the Soru Ovodda bakery took some effort and many bends on the mountain roads of central Sardinia. Fabio Soru runs a carasau bread bakery in the mysterious Barbagia region. Fabio took over the business from his father, who began making local baked goods 30 years ago - today it employs 10 people and sells bread to restaurants, as well as shipping it to Paris and London.
This is no ordinary bread. It consists of very thin, flat and crisp pieces of baked dough, somewhat like Polish podpłomyki flatbreads. Simple ingredients and a special baking method give it a very long shelf life; in the past, shepherds took it with them when grazing their sheep for weeks on end. Fabio is faithful to the recipes and the baking method, but he also experiments a little - it turned out that adding ground charcoal ash enriches the flavour of the product without going beyond the limits set by tradition. Black bread in black packaging intrigues people and is also gaining popularity. "Carasau" can be found in good Italian delicatessens.
Desserts From Pompia Fruit
Travelling around Sardinia, I came to the town of Siniscola, the only place on the island, and probably in the world, where jams and desserts are made from the pompia fruit (pronounced: pom-pee-ya). The fruit arose through a natural mutation of the citron (also a rather mysterious fruit, from Italy's Calabria, which I described here) and the bitter lemon. Centuries ago, Sardinians sheltered from pirates in the mountainous part of the island, staying away from the coast. When the pirate raids ceased, the inhabitants gradually began to settle the coast again, and that is when they found strange fruit growing on trees resembling orange trees. To this day, no one knows where the pompia came from or why it appeared.
Today only 4 families process this fruit, and one of the people devoted to preserving the tradition of eating pompia, which goes back to the 17th century, is Francesca Pau. As the raw fruit cannot be eaten (it is 3 times more sour than a lemon), it has to be prepared before eating. The white, intact layer (technically called the "albedo") was cooked in honey for many hours and served as a dessert, most often on freshly picked orange leaves. Relatively recently it was discovered that the pulp can also be eaten and makes a tasty jam. Before jam-making began, this part of the fruit was considered suitable only as a natural agent for... cleaning copper pots.
The main buyers of the jars of delicious preserves are restaurants and often ice-cream parlours too. The peel does not go to waste either - it is the main ingredient of a liqueur. Research is currently under way into possible uses of pompia in cosmetics and medicine; its antifungal properties have already been all but proven.
Fiore Sardo Dei Pastori Sheep's Cheese
Sardinia also has its own unique cheeses. The "Fiore Sardo dei pastori" sheep's cheese is one of them. I visited Salvatore Bussu, who makes a cheese with a long history and a strong, distinctive flavour. I had met Salvatore a few months earlier in Warsaw, and his cheese-making demonstration made a great impression on the audience. The word fiore ("flower") in the cheese's name may be linked to the use of thistle flowers as a source of rennet. Other accounts suggest that the wooden moulds used to make the cheese had a flower pattern. These patterns made it possible to tell which producer a particular batch came from.
The traditional production technique has remained essentially unchanged for centuries: right after milking, the raw, whole sheep's milk is placed in copper vats. After 20-30 minutes, depending on the season, the curd is broken into particles the size of a grain of rice and left at the bottom of the vat. The curd is then patiently gathered from the bottom of the vat and pressed into characteristic moulds. When the mass is firm, it is taken out of the mould and left for about 24 hours, then immersed in brine, where it stays for 8-12 hours. The cheeses are then placed on wooden racks, where they are smoked for about 2 weeks. Once they have reached the right degree of maturity, the cheeses are periodically rubbed with a mixture of wine vinegar, olive oil and salt. The process seems simple, but it requires extraordinary attention from the cheesemaker, slow movements and a great deal of patience. Although the amount of cheese produced is fairly small, its quality is truly exceptional.
Salvatore Bussu has his farm in Macomer, where, together with 4 workers, he looks after 1,300 sheep, which have 1,300 hectares of grazing land. Besides hard cheese, Salvatore also makes a delicious spreadable cheese. This artisan cheese for connoisseurs is currently sold by 3 shops in Poland.
If you would like to read more about Italian cheeses, I recommend two articles - here you will find more about cheeses from northern Italy and here about cheeses from southern Italy.
Are those all of Sardinia's specialities? There are still a few products that have long set Sardinia apart on Italy's culinary map. One worth mentioning is the dried roe "Bottarga", which can be served with pasta. In shops it comes in powdered form, in small jars. The roe has an intense, fishy and salty flavour.
Another local product is "Malvasia" wine, which you can find in small shops in the town of Bosa on the west coast. Many of the bars in this little town advertise themselves as excellent places to taste local drinks, including Malvasia.
Do you like reading about the food of different countries? Here you can read what Malta has to offer.
How do you recognise authentic Italian products, which have acquired many imitations and substitutes whose quality may fall short of the original? To find your way more easily through the jungle of supermarket shelves, I recommend reading my article on how to choose top-quality Italian products.
