My grandmother’s seadas

Recipe

• 4 cups (500 grams) of unbleached all-purpose flour
• About 1 cup (250 milliliters) cold water
• 4 tablespoons (50 grams) of butter (my grandmother used lard)
• Pinch of salt
• 10 ounces (300 grams) of pecorino cheese, cut into fine slices
• Olive oil for frying (or canola oil if you prefer)
• 3/4 cup (250 grams) honey. I use regular honey, but if you can find bitter honey, use it!

1. Mix the flour and salt, then slowly add the cold water, mixing all the time, until you have a silky consistency. Add the butter and knead until well mixed. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.
2. Roll the dough out to be about 1/8 of an inch thick, then cut into 24 rounds about 4–5 inches wide (you can use a bowl or a pastry cutter).
3. Place a few slices of cheese in the center of a round of dough, then put another round of dough on top. Press the edges together with your fingers, or with a fork. The fork looks better 🙂
4. Gently warm the honey in a bain-marie (heat water in a pot, put the honey in a smaller pot inside the larger pot).
5. Fill a wide pan with olive oil to a depth of about an inch. When hot, fry the seadas until golden on both sides (you can either flip them, or just spoon the hot oil over the top).
6. Remove from the pan and place on paper towels.
7. Drizzle the honey over the top and serve while hot.

When I was growing up in Antella, we often ate Sunday dinner with my Sardinian grandmother in her apartment. For dessert, she served seadas—semolina pastry filled with pecorino cheese. She deep-fried them in olive oil, then drizzled bitter honey on top while they were still hot. She made big batches and froze them, so she’d always have some for us.

You don’t find seadas in Tuscany—it was a treat I could get only at her house.

When she lived in Sardinia, in Tempio Pausania, she used miele di corbezzolo, honey from the flowers of the wild strawberry tree, famous for its bitter taste. You can’t find miele di corbezzolo in Tuscany, so she used miele di castagno (chestnut tree honey) instead.

Then I moved away, first to study linguistics in Siena, then to teach at the university in Grenoble, and I left Italy behind. My favorite restaurant was Lebanese. I traveled to South America, to New Zealand, to Asia. I visited my family in Florence, and most of my friends were Italian, but I was a citizen of the world.

Then I got married and moved across the ocean to Oregon. And suddenly, I didn’t know who I was. I’d lost my friends, my work, and the Italian culture I hadn’t even known was important to me.

I started compulsively cooking the dishes of my childhood. Pici al cavolo nero. Latte alla portoghese. Spaghetti alle vongole. Pan di ramerino. I bought a pasta maker and made my own pasta. I started a cooking class to teach Italian cooking.

And—in my kitchen in Eugene, Oregon—I made my Sardinian grandmother’s seadas.

Eventually, I found my way. But cooking seadas and all the other recipes was how I took the first step of acknowledging my Tuscan and Sardinian identities.