How To Fall Off Your Diet in Sardinia

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You'll find all the standard Italian fare on Sardinian menus, but here are a few of the local specialties (and don't ask us how to pronounce them!):

• pane carasau: Sardinia's famed unlevened bread. Mainland Italians call it carta da musica, but this is its real name. Made from stone-ground local wheat, it is baked in brick ovens where it blows up into a perfect hollow sphere. The women remove the globe, slice it in half and place the resulting flat discs of bread on paper to dry. Sardinian shepherds live for weeks on pane carasau and pecorino sardo, the world's best sheep cheese
• pane frattau: pane carasau topped with warm tomato sauce, a fried egg and grated cheese makes a great light dinner
• carciofi: artichokes, any way they're offered
• cauladda: peasant soup of cabbage, fava beans, sausage and boiled meats
• favata di fave: fava beans stewed with pork rind, sausage, wild herbs and cabbage
• cascà: Sardinian couscous (mainly in Carloforte)
• malloreddus all'oristanese: saffron-laced pasta with a sauce of swiss chard, eggs and cream
• sus maccarrones de urta o ascaos: gnocchi with melted sour fresh cheese
• sa merca: roast fish smothered in ziba, a uniquely fragrant local herb
• s'anguidda a craddaxu e incasada: tiny eels boiled and sprinkled with grated cheese
• aragosta alla castellanese: lobster sautéed with tomatoes, garlic, onion, red pepper and lemon
• bracciole di asinello: mule steaks
• porcheddu: spit-roast suckling pig
• s'anzone incasau: lamb roasted with breadcrumbs and cheese
• is cojettas: horsemeat rolls stuffed with herbs
• sevàdas: deep-fried pasties filled with fresh sour cheese and drizzled with honey
• rujolos: sweet cheese fritters

• Occhio di Pernice, a light red wine from Castelsardo
• Cannonau, a heady red wine
• Vermentino, an extremely flavorful white wine
• Malvasia di Bosa and Moscato, sweet white wines
• Mirto, the exquisite and relatively rare blueberry aquavit
• Fil'e ferru, a powerful local variation of aquavit
• Abbardente, a variation of Fil'e ferru

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