Until now, I have only visited Sardinia’s coast. They were trips long enough for my partner’s band to play one, maybe two concerts in a venue on a beach, to wander a bit, swim and to be given inland recommendations, before catching the night ferry back to the mainland. We would also make sure to eat seadas, which have nothing at all to do with the sea and are pronounced say-ah-das.
The name seada or sebada (plural seadas or sebadas) is thought to originate from the Sardinian sebu/seu, which indicates animal fat – the lard used in the pasta, in this case. A pastoral dish for a pastoral island, seadas’ traditional filling is casu furriau, or fresh pecorino that hasn’t been aged. It is traditional, too, that the young, sweet, milky cheese is wrapped in cloth and left out for two days, so it turns gently acidic. The pecorino is then cut into pieces and melted in a terracotta dish, along with water, citrus zest and flour, until creamy and pliable enough to be shaped, with wet hands, into sink-plug discs of filling that are then enclosed in pasta and deep-fried.
Not being able to find the right cheese here in Rome, and, I suspect, more widely, either, I have adapted the recipe to use grated pecorino romano (older, more piquant and almost certainly made in Sardinia, because 98% of the 34,000 or so tonnes of pecorino romano produced annually is), pinched together with citrus zest and water to make a soft paste. This substitution changes the seadas, however, making them more fried pastries with a hot heart of melted pecorino and coated in honey, but they are still sublime.
Approach making seadas as you would fresh pasta. Or, better still, ravioli, because the form is almost identical, just bigger. As with pasta making, a playful approach – you are making a nice-feeling dough, then rolling and cutting it, before sealing parcels – is also helpful.
Traditionally, the honey used is meli amaricosu (miele amaro in Italian), or bitter honey, the nature of which is attributed to the bees’ diet of corbezzolo (strawberry plant) and assenzio (absinthe), both of which abound in central Sardinia. John Tyndale captures the bitter quality in his 1849 book about Sardinian customs, suggesting it’s “similar to that of orange in marmalade, giving a fine countenancing flavour to the luscious sweetness of the honey”. I can’t find meli amaricosu locally, so have substituted that with chestnut honey, which has a similarly frank bitterness alongside the sweetness. I imagine Scottish heather honey would also work well – or simply use whatever you have. Just make sure that you spoon it over while the pastry is blistering hot, then eat immediately.
Seadas – Sardinian pasta fritters with pecorino and honey
Makes 12-15
200g semolina flour
25g lard, or olive oil
150g pecorino fresco, pecorino romano or sardo, grated on the star side of a grater
Zest of 1 orange
Zest of 1 lemon
Olive oil, or peanut or sunflower oil, for frying
Chestnut honey, or whatever kind you have to hand, for drizzling
Make the dough by mixing the flour, lard and 90ml water so they come together into a firm dough. Wrap and rest in the fridge for two hours.
In a bowl, mix (or, rather, squish) togetherthe grated pecorino, both citrus zests and two tablespoons of water. If you wish, you can do this in a bain-marie so it softens, rather than melts, into a sort of putty.
Use a pasta roller or rolling pin to extend the dough until it’s about 2mm in thickness, then use a cutter to make about 30 discs of about 9cm width. Put a spoonful of cheese in the centre of half the circles, then cover with one of the other discs and press closed, using a fork to seal the edges.
To cook the seadas, I find a small, deep frying pan works best. Heat about 5cm oil until it’s hot enough to make a cube of bread fry in a lively way, then cook the seadas in batches, turning gently, until golden on both sides. Use a slotted spoon to lift out on to a plate lined with kitchen towel, to blot, then move to a serving plate. Drizzle with the honey and serve immediately.
