Trailing Off....: May 2016

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Eating for Longevity

culurgiones

One reason I chose to go to Sardinia is that it is one of the five "Blue Zones" (more here), which include Ikaria, Greece; Loma Linda, California; Okinawa, Japan; and Nicoya, Costa Rica. People in these places tend to live longer, with a better quality of health. Movement, community, spirituality, and of course, diet, all contribute to this phenomenon. Though I highly doubt that the average Sardinian stuffs their face as much as I did on this holiday, I was able to get a sense of how using fresh, local ingredients and long-standing traditional recipes makes for a healthy daily diet.

Because Sardinia is an island, one might imagine platefuls of plump shrimp or white fish dressed in rich green olive oil, garlic, and herbs or bowls of linguine with clams. However, seafood was not part of the traditional fare as people mostly lived inland due to constant threat from invaders and pirates. Therefore, lamb, goat, cured meats, a myriad of cheeses, and a variety of vegetables and grains graced the family dinner table. The invaders who did get in (and there have been several) left their imprint on the menu with couscous like pasta, saffron, chickpeas, and lentils, to name a few.

eggplant, fava beans, potatoes, and flatbread in the background

The first dish I tried was culurgiones (see first picture), ravioli stuffed with cheese, potato, and mint and covered in a rich tomato sauce and sprinkled with pecorino. Whereas the round, hard pinkish vegetable you buy in Ireland can barely choke out "tomato", the tomato in Sardinian belts out an aria that reverberates long after the fork is put down. The cheese, potato, and mint work in a perfect harmony to accompany the tomatic opera. Other pasta dishes were equally moving and I enjoyed them more than once.

malloreddus, a gnocchi like pasta flavoured with saffron, with goat sauce

When in Italy, I don't usually order the "secondi" because it's just a hunk of meat that's been grilled or braised, food which I grew up on. But we had to try two of the specialities, roasted suckling pig (porcedu) and braised goat with thyme. The suckling pig had to be ordered a day in advance. It was entirely too much meat, but I did enjoy experiencing the actual taste of pork again. What is sold in the supermarket might as well be made from a slipper.

a heaping pile of pork

Seafood has become more popular now that people don't feel they need to hide in the mountains. I'm not a huge fan of the frutti del mare, but I went out of my comfort zone and ordered a large antipasti of dishes I'd never heard of or tried. Beautiful to look at and even more beautiful to eat. Gnocchi with a saffron and shrimp sauce was pretty amazing and the ravioli stuffed with shrimp and scallops and sprinkled with fish roe dust wasn't too shabby either. But really, at the end of the day, just give me a bowl of pasta with tomato sauce!

colourful yumminess

Of course, what trip to Italy would be complete without pizza? The fact that we had to wait several days to go the pizzeria made the giant discs that much more delicious. How any place can serve pizza that hasn't been cooked in a wood-burning oven is beyond me. Yes, I've become a pizza snob.

sent from heaven

This year, I started eating vegetarian/vegan meals Monday-Thursday and then enjoying a little meat at the weekend, maybe in the form of a homemade cheeseburger or some sort of slow-cooked taco filling. It's my own small way of leaving a smaller carbon footprint, while also becoming healthier. If everyone ate less meat, perhaps we wouldn't need to imprison animals in tiny boxes until we're ready to eat them. They could graze in wide open spaces in the sunshine and in the process, become even more delicious! Sardinia is a place that reminds us that food reflects the history of a place and when healthy and scrumptious, shouldn't be forgotten. But more importantly, it shows us that locally-produced, non-processed, lovingly made cuisine is the stuff of a long and healthy life.

more culurgiones

more malloreddus

seafood risotto

malloreddus with olive oil, rocket, and cheese

gnocchi with shrimp and saffron sauce

seafood ravioli

pasta with roasted veggies and soft cheese I made

pane carasau (music bread) stuffed with tomato sauce, egg, and cheese

penne with goat ragu

pane carasau (flat bread) layered with roasted veg and cheese

pork sausage and fennel braised in wine

potato flour based pizza with sausage

goats cheese and eggplant

torredas-bread dipped in egg and fried, topped with prosciutto and cheese

grilled pork (meh)

grilled eggplant

shrooms in olive oil and wine

Sardo pizza-pecorino cheese, sausage, bacon

vegetarian pizza--not as good as the one above!

braised goat with thyme

we always share the dishes 50/50

airport pizza with buffalo mozzerrella

S's favourite drink: Aperol spritz

sebadas-fried bread filled with cheese and covered in honey

local beer at the end of a long walk

coppa ham--the best!

yummy craft beer

lots of booze in this cream

seaside gelato sundae

break from swimming

Baunei cream-filled pastries

local products cooked at the apartment

Sardinia: Walking in the Wilderness

Looking down on Pedra Longa

It’s the middle of the afternoon on the second day of our trip. We’ve been walking for nearly five hours and though we’ve seen countless goats and lizards, a few wild boars, and an overly-protective sheep dog, we’ve yet to see another human. Though we get lost and emerge miles from our intended destination, I am drunk on the abundance of fresh air, the scent of pine and eucalyptus, the technicolour brightness of wildflowers and sea, and the mountains that stand like guards against the rest of the world.

On the way to Dorgali

On the map, we covered just a few specks on the edge of the 35,000-hectare mountain range, Supramonte, located in a mostly uninhabited area of Ogliastra province in eastern Sardinia. It seems like an odd choice given how much the island has to offer, including an entire cat colony on the beaches of Su Pallosu on the western coast. After spending nine days in this remote area, walking on old mule tracks, zigzagging up and down the mountains and through valleys and sometimes to the sea, I emerged feeling not that I had spent time in a small area with little to do, but that the world, despite our ability to traverse it and conquer it so easily, is actually still a vast and wild place.

High up in the hills somewhere

Baunei, population 3500, was our base camp due to its proximity to many hiking trails and some of the best beaches in Sardinia. It isn’t a touristy place, which is why we had the dual benefits of finding a large but really cheap apartment to stay in and being forced to mostly interact in Italian. We could have done more by staying in more than one town but the thing I hate most about travelling is travelling. I loved entering the apartment, hanging my four shirts in the closet, and stashing my bag where I wouldn’t have to look at it for the next several days.

Looking down on Baunei

Baunei has one restaurant which opens at 19:30 every day, a pizzeria that opens at 19:00 Fri-Sun, and two tiny “supermarkets” which close between 12:00 and 17:00 every day for siesta. There’s one lovely church that boasts a painting of Christ’s circumcision, three bars (in Italy more a place for coffee rather than booze), no clothing shops, and only a few steep and narrow streets. The architecture isn’t particularly pretty, nor is there a city wall or castle. It seems to be a town of farmers that caters a bit to the loads of German tourists, who roam between towns on motorcycles on the terrifying mountain highway and stop in Baunei for a short refreshment. The older generation of Sardinians are pocket-sized and wear mostly dark colours and stand around outside the church or one another’s houses gossiping the day away. They probably thought it strange when they repeatedly saw us walking up the hill morning after morning decked out in our trekking gear.

the one and only restaurant and church of Baunei

In total we did about 10 of the “50 walks of Sardinia” (written by a guy who assumes I know much more about nature than I actually do. “Turn left at the outcrop of leaning mimosas”—1) what’s an outcrop? And 2) how can a cocktail lean without spilling?). Each day we chose a different walk or combination of walks and repeated a couple of stretches but going the opposite way. On a couple of occasions, we used the excellent public transport to get to walks further afield. The parts of the trails that were on dirt tracks were quite easy and felt like cheating, but other times, we had to scramble up or down barely noticeable paths, made slippy and treacherous by the bits of limestone rock. We lost the trail a few times and once went around in circles around a shepherd’s hut that because of the overcast day, made us feel like we stumbled into Game of Thrones territory. I discovered that although going up a mountain is much easier than going down, doing 30 minutes on a Cross Trainer is no preparation for a relentless ascent.

scary cliff

I have to be honest--there were times I wanted to cry because my feet hurt and I was spending way too much time in my own head and its unending selection of bad thoughts. But mostly I was in a blissful meditative state that I can only ever achieve when running. There’s no way I can choose what I loved most about being outdoors for 5-7 hours a day on this trip. Was it the constant sunshine and 23/75 degree temps? The forests that changed from pine to oak to trees I’ve never seen? The lazing goats and their Mona Lisa smiles? The gorgeous turquoise of the Mediterranean miles below? Swimming in the sea and looking up at the hills from whence I walked? The valleys at sunset as seen from my balcony? The other-worldly like rock formations? The ancient burial ground in the middle of nowhere? The lack of people? All I know is that for eight days, I was as far from grammar, drug addicts, cement, and pigeon poo as one can possibly get and still be in Europe.

Photos from the trip in no particular order: