Kevin72

That does sound really, really good.

The link for the chicken and fennel doesn't seem to be working . . . so is it just braised in its own marinade, no browning or separate aromatic cooking? I've done some light research into Sardinian breads. Root mentions what a bread-eating culture they are in Foods of Italy but also gives the impression that these aren't too different from the standard crusty loaves. Carol Field's Italian Baker has, curiously, not one Sardinian bread recipe in it, not even for curasau. Culinaria has a page in its Sardinian chapter devoted to the breads of the region, but really doesn't give much specifics. There's a picture of a crusty round loaf, and they also mention a version of ciabatta commonly being consumed.

I read the first chapter in a bookstore over the weekend; it's a dinner party where the author invited Mario over and, naturally, he took over in the kitchen. Very amusing chapter, including some eye opening insights into Mario's, ahem, colorful past. That's now three books that hit the shelves just in the past month that I want. And my birthday's next week!

Actually, I may have to agree with you. The cookies are too finely ground and it's just the cookie! I like the brands that use Oreos or Oreo-like cookies in the mix and you get some of the icing in there. Texas Gold does a really good version of this. I like Blue Bell's plain ol' Vanilla and love their ice cream sandwiches. Except for the creepy girl on the cover carton.

1 cup vinegar 1/4 cup sugar 3 oz each: prunes, chopped; bitter chocolate, sultanas 1/2 stick cinnamon 2-3 dried bay leaves Put the sugar, vinegar and bay leaves in a sauce pan, bring to a simmer and dissolve the sugar. Let it reduce a little. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes, until slightly thickened. Side note: I love those "lazy lasagna" dishes where you just serve the sheets with a sauce and don't bake 'em. There's one for Mario's Sicily shows, and I was going to do a similar dish from Plotkin's Liguria book before we ran out of time. Thanks for the compliments on the dinner, everyone.

I almost, almost went to Nerbone when we were there, then got sidetracked by the stand "Porks" which had a giant pig for the sign, and ordered a porchetta sandwich. It was cold. Shoulda known better than to go to a place with an English name.

And, another entry on my multiple page "Places to Try Next Time In Houston" list.

Seems like we often get a little synchonicity going in these threads and all hit on one dish at once. For my inaugural Sardinian meal, I joined the malloreddus club: The whole meal was from Ada Boni's cookbook. For this recipe, though, I subbed 1 cup AP flour instead of going all semolina; I have experienced problems in the past when making thick, stubby pasta with all semolina. Even so, Shaya, I found these to still be a little . . . "toothsome". Here they are sauced with a tomato and mint sauce, topped with coarsely grated pecorino "al pastore"; they didn't have any Sardo this time. I gotta say that despite the overly firm outcome, these are remarkably quick, easy, and fun to prepare. I had been worried that since I got a late start on dinner we'd be eating really late, thinking that it'd take me an hour just to roll these out, but they were quite cooperative and done in just a matter of a few flicks. Two more items from Boni for the main and contorno; pork and boar chops with a sweet and sour sauce and baked zucchini: The zucchini were, as with the stuffed zucchini I made in Liguria, blanched whole, then cut in half. They were then topped with roasted peppers, tomato sauce, anchovies, and feta. I read somewhere that feta is actually used in Sardinian cooking, giving me a chance to use one of my favorite cheeses, sheep's milk feta. In the sweet and sour sauce: vinegar, chocolate, sugar, prunes, raisins, cinnamon. My wife said it tasted like a barbecue sauce and that I needed to find another excuse to use this, soon.

Just wait til we get to Sicily. You'll be desserted out for sure! I've got to tell my wife about that one! Great writeup as always, thank you for the information. This kind of syncs up with what I've read about the tradition of the Sardinian natives living inland and not populating the coast much; they were subject to frequent pirate raids and thus the saying could be taken quite literally.

Yeah, I love her recipes, but her prose can get a little at times. Wait 'til you read the chapter on Puglia! Fittingly, her next books after these were romance novels.

Another possible cookbook reference for Sardinia: Marcella Hazan's Marcella Cucina seemed to have a lot of Sardinian recipes.

I'd like to give a Rome-related shout-out to Andrew Fenton's funny and highly jealousy-inducing blog on moving to and living in la cita eterna, with lots of food-related goodness as well: click here.

Were they soft or really young? I bought pecorino Sardo for the pesto I made last weekend and was surprised that it was a fairly young cheese.

Not as much as in Sicily, alot of countries either claimed it from afar or established outposts there but then moved on without being absorbed into the native customs. A few things here and there have taken hold: the couscous, the culingionis I mentioned above came from the Piemontese or Savoy's rule of the island.

What did you think of the texture? I found them to be really light and delicate and hopelessly addictive. When I made them I was running low on ricotta and augmented it with sheep's milk feta, which added a whole new level to the dish and a nice tang to it.

That reminds me that I'm kinda limited on my cooking this month, as well. I love the combo of cauliflower and olives. My wife makes a similar salad for lunches sometimes and I can't get enough of it.

Yeah, a Plotkin recipe from a ristorante along the Riviera. The sauce tasted like a vaguely vegetal hollandaise, what with the egg yolks in there. There was some bitter element to it as well, I'm trying to figure out what that would be from. But overall, "refined" is exactly what I was going for with this meal.

I've been astonished at seeing fregula in quite a few places lately. I saw Lidia Bastianich make this on one of her older shows; it involved a sieved box that she shook the dampened flour through to form pellets. It does look like a production.

Housekeeping: this is the last month of the second quarter of cooking. For the third quarter, the regions as voted will be: July: Sicily August: Puglia September: Campania Starting throughout August, we’ll be voting for the fourth quarter.

In June we will be covering the cooking of Sardinia. Some of the descriptions of the cooking utilize the word “archaic” and “Neolithic”; the native Sardinians here have ancestry on the island going back thousands of years. Throughout history, different nations have laid claim to the island and tried to establish footholds at various parts. Unlike Sicily, however, comparatively little intermingling of cooking styles, recipes, and ingredients have penetrated inland, where the Sardinians made their home over the centuries. Thus, the cooking style remains very simple, honest, and unadulterated: lots of hearth cooking, roasting on spits, or in pits dug into the ground, with the natural herbs, principally myrtle, used to flavor the meat. Like Liguria to the north, Sardinia does not have a rich tradition of seafood dishes until relatively recently. Unlike Liguria, however, it is not because the waters around Sardinia are poor in seafood but instead the natives have for generations lived inland amongst the hills and plateaus of the island. Supposedly, the purpose for this originally was to avoid the frequent pirate raids along the coast, but also because many of the beaches were havens for malaria. Two authors, Waverly Root and Claudia Roden, even go so far as to say Sardinians show an aversion to the water and an active disdain for fish! This would appear to be changing, and almost at an exponential rate. Root’s book The Foods of Italy, published in the early 70s, describes only one port city, really, and a paucity of seafood trattorie and ristorante there; Roden’s book, written in the early 90s, mentions that tourism, beachfront development, and a return to the shore have flooded the island’s industry in just 20 years. In Root’s rather good chapter on Sardinia, he mentions that the severe climate of the island makes it difficult to grow vegetables, and indeed, there aren't many recipes for vegetables that I’ve encountered in my research. Most often traditional dishes come with one of the many types of bread made all over the island. Root says that bread, in fact, plays an even larger role than pasta does in Sardinia. This may be a difficult month for references and resources for those of us in the U.S., at least. An Amazon book search for “Sardinia” and “Sardegna” only turns up one book: Guliano Bugiali’s Foods of Sicily and Sardinia and the Smaller Islands. So, we’ll need to cull together our resources and rely on writeups in regional surveys. Therefore, books that mention Sardinia that I have: The Regional Food of Southern Italy by Marleni di Blasi (recently reprinted and republished under a new name) Claudia Roden’s Foods of Italy Italian Regional Cooking by Ada Boni Culinaria: Italy Islands in the Sun by Marlena Spieler Again, I highly recommend Spieler’s Islands in the Sun. It’s an interesting book highlighting the cooking of many of the islands all over the peninsula: not just Sicily and Sardinia, but also Elba, Capri, Ischia, Pantelleria, the Aeolian Isles, etc. Many very vibrant, summery recipes and a perfect accompaniment to this time of year. Famous dishes: as mentioned, lots of spit and pit-roasted meat, including a variant on porchetta called porceddu; the famous pane carasau, aka carte musica bread, the crispy baked flatbread shepherds carry with them and then refresh in water before eating with grated cheese; malloredus, a type of gnocchi with saffron in the dough; Culingionis, a stuffed pasta, and carnaxiu, an item that puts the U.S. turducken to shame: A boned out calf, stuffed with a kid, stuffed with a suckling pig, stuffed with a hare, stuffed with a partride, stuffed with a quail. Who's volunteering for this one? Anyone have any luck finding Sardinian Maggot Cheese?

Our last meal of the month: A modification of whitebait (aka bianchetti) soup: I used baby shrimp instead of bianchetti. Zucchini, peas (I fell back on frozen artichokes after discovering I was out of frozen peas), the shrimp and capellini are poached in a seafood stock, then marjoram(oregano again!) and eggs are swirled in at the last minute. Again, very delicate and aromatic. The main was snapper fillets with asparagus sauce: The asparagus are poached with a garlic clove, then pureed with egg yolks into a sauce. The fish is lightly sauteed with shallots and placed over the sauce. It was amazingly quick to prepare, too, maybe only 40 minutes?

Good looking stuff there. Was the squid just with greens? There's another recipe that stews squid with greens and chickpeas that's also really good and satisfying. Guess you like it spicy, eh? Glad you liked Liguria. I really enjoyed this month as well. I heard numerous comments about how "refreshing" and "delicate" the food was, and even a couple times that it felt very healthy to be eating this way.

Asti was an alternate choice for the evening, and I'm more intrigued after such a good experience at Fino. I want to say I got the impression that the sommelier was a fairly recent addition.

Yeah, I always use dry, too.

I think those were the trofie. I liked the corzetti.