No Extra Salt Needed

This weekend was absolutely amazing where we got to see the island in an entirely new perspective. We traveled outside of the city for an overnight on the west side of the island where we enjoyed the history of the island and the farming lifestyle.

Outside of the port, view of the water and Pan di Zucchero

On Saturday morning, we traveled to the western side of the island to visit an old port called Porto Flavia that was once connected to a mine. It was created in order to be competitive with another company back when many different metals were being mined in the island. Instead of having to take the metals far away from the mine, they created a port inside of the mountain. It was cool to be able to see inside of the mine, yet I could never imagine having to work inside the darkness like that. The view from the port as well as just the coast was amazing as well. The ocean here is beautiful with crystal clear waters where you can see the bottom. We didn't enter the water, but still just to be able to stare at it for a few minutes was amazing.

Learning about the history of the port from out guide

After the mine, we enjoyed a similar lunch to our giant dinner with tons of seafood and course after course after course. It seemed like never-ending food, and not being a huge fan of seafood didn't make the food stop. I did try almost everything, but the taste of fish is still not favorite. We got back on the bus after the meal and drove to Tempio di Antas where we saw a restored structure that was created in the Roman style on top of an older structure. Many people have visited Sardinia over the years and tried to take control of the island because of its position in the Mediterranean and recently there have been discoveries on the island (well, just recently released) that would change the history of the Mediterranean and the role Sardinians played. After our long day, we went to the place we spent the night which was an agriturismo place that had a farm but also a bed and breakfast. There, we enjoyed another great meal (the food here is way too good) and the stars that aren't very apparent in the city.

Tempio di Antas

Agriturismo Sa Perda Marcada

Sunday we spent the morning enjoying breakfast at the agriturismo place and then received a cooking lesson from the owner's daughter. The first thing we had to make was called malloreddus which is a Sardinian gnocchetti. All 20 of us had to take the pasta dough we were given, roll it out into a thin rope, and then take little bit of it and press it into a shaper to make a sort of curled, ribbed piece of pasta. The result looked like this:

Malloreddus

Seadas/seabadas

It seemed like we were making pieces of pasta for a while, but working as a team to make all of the pasta that we would later eat was a lot of fun. I think it's easy to forget where food comes from because a lot of the time, we just go to the supermarket and buy whatever we need or want. This is especially true where I'm from in Colorado because the majority of our food is transported into the mountains. We couldn't produce it ourselves because of the weather and climate, so being able to make food using ingredients from the farm such as the eggs from the chickens and tomatoes from the garden for sauce was pretty neat. After making all of the pasta, we then made a traditional Sardinian dessert called seadas/sebadas. It started off with dough and from there we rolled it out to make a thin sheet. In the past, they used rolling pins, but we used a Kitchen Aid with a pasta dough rolling attachment. It wasn't the most traditional part, but it does reflect the change in the times and even with the help of the appliance the dessert took longer than the pasta. After rolling out the dough into a thin sheet, a pile of fresh goat cheese was added on top with lemon zest. The dough was rolled back onto the cheese in order to make a sort of ravioli and then sealed with a fork once removing the extra dough. This was then fried and served with honey on top. From there, the owner and her family cooked and prepared out meal and the result was delicious! One thing that I found really interesting was that Sardinian cooking doesn't use a lot of spices. For example, in a tomato sauce there is usually only onion and some basil and maybe garlic if you like it. Yet, it tastes amazing and much better than many other tomato sauces. This can only be due to the quality of the ingredients they have here on the island. They make things simple because they don't need to add anything else.

Finished pasta with tomato sauce

Fried seada with honey

After the cooking lesson, we headed to the beach for an hour where I personally got covered in a layer of salt. No wonder all of the sea food here is never salted. The Mediterranean provides enough! Now, time to get back to class and continue to explore the city of Cagliari.

Beach!