Lisa Musu and Daniela Melis: Culurgiones
We met Lisa and Daniela, two beautiful hard working and very welcoming women, at artisan workshop Sas Durcuras, Cagliari, that opens to the public offering its delicious sweets, fresh pasta with typical Sardinian products available to those who are not satisfied with tasting them in a restaurant but also want to take them home.
It was very impressive to watch these two beautiful ladies making culurgiones by hand. Truly culinary art!
The culurgiones are a typical delicacy of the Sardinian tables. In the town of Ulassai, culurgiones are eaten only on the “Day of the Dead” held in 2nd November and this tradition continued till late 1960’s. In all of Ogliastra and in the villages of Sadali and Esterzili in the Barbagia of Seulo are not considered only a food, but a precious gift, a sign of respect and friendship. They were prepared for special occasions on festive seasons like Thanksgiving, at the end of the wheat harvest, the day of remembering the dead and Carnival in February. Sa spighita, the typical closure of culurgionis, represents the symbol of wheat to propitiate the new agricultural year in late August. According to tradition they were also considered to be the talisman that safeguards family deprivation.
The easiest preparation of culurgiones which needs whole potatoes, cheese, mint, for stuffing and the dough is made from semolina flour, all purpose flour, eggs, water and salt. Make the pasta and stuff it with your potato filling. Freeze them and later boil them in ample salt water. There are few options to serve culurgiones, like butter and sage or with tomato sauce. Also you can fried them, delicious as well.
The dough, filling and sauce are remarkably easy to make, but the trick is to get the stitching process correct so that each filled pocket resembles a wheat sheaf. Hopefully this video will help.
Prep. time: 60 minutes
Cook Time: 7 minutes
Difficulty: 4 out of 5
Serve: 6
Ingredients:
INGREDIENTS FOR 60 CULURGIONES:
125 g durum wheat semolina
300 g all purpose flour