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 Sardegna food: Cagliari, traditional cuisine
A stay in Cagliari also includes an encounter with a cuisine
that offers a wide variety of excellent dishes. So we advise you to forget about
Italian and international cooking, at least for once, and let yourself be
tempted by the flavors of the Sardinian tradition. The choice of Sardegna food begins with the
bread.
Some examples: su cifraxu,
the most common, is in the shape of an enormous sandwich roll;
su coccoi is made with fine flour and is
decorated with small crests which during the baking become golden brown and
crisp (is pizzicorrus);
su pani carasau, a very thin, crisp flat
bread made with flour and semolina, excellent served with olive oil and salt and
known as su pani guttiau. From carasau is
made pani frattau by dipping the bread in
hot water then seasoning it in layers with tomato sauce, ground meat and grated
pecorino cheese. It is topped by a poached egg. Similar to carasau, but soft, is
spianata.
A Sardinian dinner always begins with appetizers from land or
sea: wild boar ham, sausage, pickled lamb or veal feet, clams or mussels
"marinara" style, burrida (dogfish con
parsley and walnuts), bottarga (pressed
and dried tuna or mullet roe) served in thin slices sprinkled with olive oil.
Among the first courses, special mention must go to sa
fregula (coarse semolina sprinkled with
warm water and rolled into small balls under the hand) served with fish stock;
malloreddus, small gnocchi made with
semolina and saffron, served with tomato sauce and grated cheese;
culingionis, ravioli made with semolina,
and panadas, large pies filled with
vegetables, meat or eels. The latter speciality is the leading character in a
festival dedicated to it in the middle of July at Assemini (a few km from
Cagliari).
Sardinia food traditional meat dishes are suckling pigs, lambs
or kids roasted on skewers. Those who are looking for even newer flavors can
try sa cordula, lamb baked in the oven or
browned, and sanguinaccio, a blood sausage made with the intestine of the pig
filled with the animal's blood, raisins and sugar, pot-roasted or barbecued.
As concerns seafood, Sardinians prefer barbecued fish
(giltheads, striped bream, sea bass, red mullet, grey mullet and eels), while
spiny lobsters, crayfish, small squid and clams are used in making pasta sauces
and risottos. From the island's sheep breeding tradition come different kinds of
cheeses, the production of which now takes place in cheese factories. Among the
best-known are fiore sardo (or
pecorino sardo), a hard cheese made from
fresh whole ewe's milk curdled with lamb or kid rennet;
pecorino romano made with cooked ewe's
milk and lamb's rennet. It is compact and sharp;
dolce sardo, a soft cheese made from cow's milk. Quite unique is su
casu marzu (literally "rotten cheese"):
on the inside of the wheel small white worms hatch and feed on the cheese. In
time, the cheese becomes a delicate but sharp cream.
Courtesy of
Comune di Cagliari
(c) 1997-2008 E. Massetti
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