Dining

Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey: The Mediterranean flavors of Sardinia

02/28/08 @ 09:15:20 am by archivesadmin

By: Rosa Bianca

Efisio Farris’ Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey is a book of unexpected pleasures and surprises. It is not just a cookbook of esoteric recipes from a part of the world that most Americans would be hard-pressed to point to on a map (although some of the recipes are, indeed, obscure). It is not a rosily nostalgic memoir of a bygone era (although it is full of memory and love). It is not a travel book filled out with pictures and recipes (although it will make its readers want to visit what D.H. Lawrence calls “the stony island”).

It is, however, very much what the title says it is: a book about “the Mediterranean flavors of Sardinia.” It is a book about food, and taste, and how people eat in one part of the world. It does an exceptionally good job of describing this, too.

Unlike most cookbooks that concentrate on a single region, Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey doesn’t leave its readers (or cooks) feeling frustrated because they will never breathe the sea air of Sardinia or nibble on pane carasau (Sardinian “music bread”) in a sunny olive grove. Although the book is both a memoir and a paean to a certain culture, and the author-chef’s native cuisine, Farris is as interested in making the reader understand the tastes of Sardinia—the wild asparagus that grows all over the island, for example—as he is in teaching anyone how to cook it in a risotto.

There are three things that I look for whenever I am considering purchasing a new cookbook: 1) It has to be practical; 2) It has to teach me something I didn’t know about food; and 3) It has to make me hungry. Farris manages to do all of the above within the first 10 pages of the book. His “table of contents” is actually an extended recipe list, backed up at the end by a careful index—de rigueur for any cookbook to be considered practical. And the recipes themselves—“mussels-on-the-half-shell with spicy tomato relish,” “pasta with baby artichokes, salad of arugula,” “ricotta and walnuts”—were more than enough to make me hungry.

However, what really sets Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey apart from other cookbooks devoted to a regional cuisine is the effort Farris makes to bring the reader into the rhythm of life in his native island. Recipes are not just introduced with small personal anecdotes but almost explained, placed within the seasonal routines of his family and neighbors and Sardinia as a whole. The introduction is titled “History Matters” and opens with the following—well, I’d almost be tempted to call it a mission statement:

“From the moment you sit down at our table, the important thing is not how much we serve you but that we welcome you by serving the best of what we have.”

That opening line sets the tone for the entire book—devoted, one might say, to the “best of what we have.” The chapter on bread tells us not only how to make the flat bread called “music bread”—so named because it resembles the parchment paper used for sacred choral music—but also explains the ritual of “baking days” in his mother’s kitchen, in his neighbors’ kitchens, in perhaps every kitchen in the town. “In Orosei,” the author says, “there were (and still are) only two professional bakers.”

Farris refers to Sardinia as an island where “sheep outnumber people three to one” and yet this rural, pastoral haven has a rich culinary tradition—thanks, perhaps, to Sardinia’s central location in the Mediterranean Sea and to centuries of cultural invasions and conquests. The food shows complex influences from the Italian, Greek, Spanish and Moorish cultures, but it also makes the most of island’s best. The many varieties of fish and seafood, lamb and pork, the artichokes, melons and asparagus that grow wild in the rocky soil, and the endless variations of homemade pecorino and ricotta cheeses.

Most of the recipes can be made with things found in a well-stocked supermarket. But there are a few ingredients that might take some hunting—the “bitter honey” of the title is one item that will cost about $20 a jar for the real deal. There are also a few “signature” dishes that are obviously island specialties of the sort the author remembers with great fondness, but he accepts that they may be an acquired taste most won’t trouble to pursue: “If I cannot come home in the spring,” he writes, “my mother can still save me cordedda or tattaliu for my next visit.” Cordedda, I’m sorry to say, is braided lamb intestine. Tattaliu, I’m ever sorrier to say, is braided goat intestine and organs.

Regional oddities aside, Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey is an uncommonly appealing book, with recipes that seem to combine the best of flavors from an island that has been a crossroads of the Mediterranean. The watermelon salad with ricotta, arugula and walnuts is delicious. The pan-seared scallops with fregula (a kind of pasta similar to couscous) and roasted vegetables is intensely flavorful. And the Sardinian shepherd’s soup, with lamb, fresh mint and pecorino cheese, is the kind of thing a person could live on for months.

I know that there are people out there who buy cookbooks just to read them, and this is the kind of book that would make them happy. What makes me happy is that Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey is also the kind of book to explore, even if we are only exploring in our own kitchens.