Bitter Honey
Recipes and Stories from the Island of Sardinia
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- €12.99
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- €12.99
Publisher Description
Guild of Food Writer’s Awards, Highly Commended in ‘First Book’ category (2021)
In Bitter Honey, seasoned chef Letitia Clark invites us into her home on one of the most beautiful islands in the Mediterranean Sea – Sardinia.
The recipes in this book do not take long to make, but you can taste the ethos behind every one of them – one which invites you to slow down, and nourish yourself with fresh food, friends and family.
The importance of eating well is even more pronounced here on this forgotten island. Try your hand at Roasted Aubergines with Honey, Mint, Garlic and Salted honey, or a Salad of Pecorino with Walnuts and Honey, followed by Malloreddus (the shell-shaped pasta from the region) with Sausage and Tomato.
Each recipe and the story behind it will transport you to the glittering, turquoise waters and laid-back lifestyle of this Italian paradise. With beautiful design, photography, full colour illustrations and joyful anecdotes throughout, Bitter Honey is a holiday, a cookbook and a window onto a covetable lifestyle in the sun – all rolled into one.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British transplant Clark offers a wide-eyed look at Sardinia, an Italian island featuring a spectacular coast and a rural interior with an "almost biblical" landscape. Interstitial mini-essays describe some of the local products, such as sheep's cheese ("sheep outnumber people three to one" on Sardinia) and bottarga, a "sort of fishy fruit gum" transformed into a spread with anchovies and tuna and grated over linguine with clams. In a chapter on vegetables, Clark covers every aspect of preparing and consuming artichokes, then provides recipes for preserving them in oil and braising them with olives. She states up-front that she is not aiming to adhere to tradition and readily mixes Sardinian classics with dishes from elsewhere: egg ravioli with pumpkin filling from the mainland sit side by side with Sardinia's "iconic" malloredu and hedgehog-shaped culurgionis stuffed with potato and mint. In the seafood chapter, salmon not a Mediterranean fish appears along with the local dishes of baby octopus and cuttlefish. Likewise, for desserts Clark includes a recipe for seadas Sardinia's famed fried pastries with cheese and honey as well as one for a liquored-up tiramis from northern Italy. The recipe instructions are clear and chatty, with a generous number of variations and accompaniments suggested. Home cooks will delight in this charming, culinary look at this Italian island.
