Typical Recipes of Sardinia

Sardinia, more than any other region, has the pride of bread, so as to make an exhilarating series of them. The zicchi is stick-shaped, completely devoid of crumb and crunchy; it is also called, due to its special workmanship, pani iscaddatu or pane di iscaddu in the Logudoro area, pane ispanadu in the Sassari area.

Semolina is widely used for making loaves generically called pan’ e simbula; they take the strangest names, depending on the locality: civrargiu in Cagliari, crivraxiu in the Campidano, chibarzu in the Logudoro,clariu in Nuoro. The luxury bread, made with fine flour, is called pan’ e scetti. The real ritual breads are more exciting; common, in almost the whole island, those of a sexual, propitiatory form, on the occasion of weddings, and coccoi or coccoas, strictly durum wheat, which, especially in the Meilogu, shaped in the most diverse shapes, are given to relatives and friends for the funeral services. The so-called cabonischeddus, which are in the shape of a cockerel, are also celebratory and offered on various occasions, but above all as a tribute to guests. But the breads that most demand a description of a land where sheep farming and fishing have taken on a mythical value over the centuries are the mille and pane carasau or carta da musica. They accompanied and supported and fed shepherds and sailors in their endless wanderings.

Freccia is a flat, round bread, with little yeast, made with barley flour; it has a characteristic central hole, because each form is inserted, in pine cones of ten or twenty pieces, into sticks, which make it easier to transport. It is also called pillonca.

Pane carasau is a real flatbread, prepared with a dough based on barley wheat flour, without yeast, rolled out into a very thin, large round sheet by hand. Light and crunchy, it is easy to transport, if they prepare tall pine cones, and has a very long shelf life. We have seen breads for sheep farming and fishing, and traditional recipes derive from sheep farming and fishing; they are always based on either the gesture or even the product of shepherds and fishermen. Kitchen then, once again and more than anywhere else, immediate and straightforward.

Fur and feather hunting, fish from the seas, lambs and suckling pigs, vegetables and fruit full of flavour, are the elective, famous foods of Sardinia..

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