A Guide to Sardinia in Winter...

The winter in Sardinia is often known as the secret season. The days are commonly sunny and warm, the food is as always excellent, and there are few other tourists around.

The cooler days make it a lot easier to explore, during the sweltering heat of summer all you really feel like doing is getting down to one of the city's great beaches - Poetto beach is the best of these.

Cagliari is particularly good as a base during the winter with many Hotels in Cagliari offering very reasonable deals during the winter season.

The interior of the island too is great in winter, the perfect place to really experience the traditional way of life of this magical island.

In fact inland Sardinia is a world away from the coast and has an austere beauty which is easy to fall in love with. The people too are different from anywhere else in Italy, very proud and determined folk.

Often when I travel through the inland villages of Sardinia I feel that not only am I visiting another world but also that I have taken a journey back to another simpler, calmer and more peaceful time. This is how all of Italy must have been fifty years ago.

Perhaps ideal is to stay near one of the main towns nearer the coast and use it as a base.

If you can't make it to Sardinia in winter though don't worry you can still enjoy the recipe!

Ateletti alla Sarda

ingredients:

Veal or fowl,

2 ox palates,

stock,

tongue,

truffles,

butter,

mushrooms,

sweetbread.

Instructions

1) Soak two ox palates in salted water for four hours, then boil them until the rough skin comes off, and cook them in good stock for six hours, press them between two plates and let them get cold.

2) Roll some forcemeat of veal or fowl in flour, cut it into small pieces about the size of a cork, boil them in salted water, let them get cold and cut them into circular pieces.

3) Cut the ox palates also into circular pieces the same size as the bits of forcemeat, then thinner circles of cooked tongue and truffles. String on small silver skewers. Reduce to half its quantity a pint of Velute sauce, and add the cuttings of the truffles, mushroom trimmings, bits of sweetbread, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Let it get cold and then fill the the atelets (or skewers) with the forcemeat, etc.), and fry them quickly in butter.

4) Fry a large oval crouton of bread, scoop out the centre and fill it with fried slices of cucumber and truffles boiled in a little Chablis.

5) Stick the skewers into the crouton and pour the sauce round it.

For a less heavy dish and if you are squemish about using some of the meaty things use fillets of fish, truffles, mushrooms, and Bechamel sauce.

I would really like to hear from you even if it is just to say hello!!

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