Sardinian food

Sardinian cooking grew out of island life and pastoral culture: bread that keeps for weeks, sheep's cheese, meat roasted on the spit and hand-made pasta for feast days. On the coast you'll find fish, bottarga and shellfish, with Genoese touches in Carloforte and Catalan ones in Alghero.

Dishes to try

• Culurgiones
  Potato, pecorino and mint ravioli, closed with an ear-of-wheat pleat.
• Fregola with clams
  Toasted semolina pearls cooked with clams.
• Malloreddus
  Small ridged gnocchi with sausage and tomato sauce.
• Pane frattau
  Layers of carasau bread, tomato, pecorino and a poached egg.
• Sa burrida
  Dogfish marinated with walnuts, garlic and vinegar.
• Porceddu
  Suckling pig slow-roasted with myrtle.
• Seadas
  Fried pastry filled with fresh cheese and topped with honey.

Cheese, bread and bottarga

Pecorino Sardo and Fiore Sardo are the classic cheeses; carasau, the paper-thin shepherds' bread, goes with everything. Bottarga, dried grey mullet roe from the Cabras lagoons, is grated over pasta.

Wine and liqueurs

Cannonau is the island's signature red, Vermentino di Gallura its only DOCG white; also look for Carignano del Sulcis and Vernaccia di Oristano. Meals end with myrtle liqueur or filu 'e ferru.

Our full recipe collection is in Italian: follow the links for ingredients and method.