Sardinian Culurgiones Recipe

Discover the flavours of Sardinia with culurgiones: a traditional Sardinian pasta filled with delicious ingredients.

A holiday in Sardinia

Many, many years ago, I had the privilege of visiting the island of Sardinia on an all-expenses-paid whirlwind weekend trip. It was the car launch for the Fiat Idea, and I was a plus one. Let me tell you, I have never been so wined and dined in my life!

The irony was that I didn’t even have a driving license at the time, and here I was on one of Italy’s most stunning islands, being driven about in a recently launched Italian car.

This trip was probably the moment I officially fell in love with food and learned to embrace and savour new tastes and textures.

Up until this point, I disliked olives intensely. I would pick them out of whatever food I was eating and stubbornly refuse to entertain the notion of eating them (quite like how my children often behave when introduced to a new food!). However, during this trip, I was introduced to so many new dishes that I couldn’t help but get swept up in the atmosphere and immerse myself completely—well, almost.

Sardinian cuisine

We were staying in a hotel in Porto Cervo, right on the shores of the Mediterranean. A dawn chorus woke me, birds chirping in the bushes across the water.

That breakfast, oh my goodness. It was the first time I’d ever tried blood oranges—I’d never even heard of them before then, and I was intrigued by their gorgeous red-orange colour. The taste of that freshly squeezed juice lingers in my memory. I have not tasted fresh blood oranges since as I can’t obtain the fruit on my remote North Sea island home.

I fell in love with olives, cheese, bread, and wine. As part of the car launch, we had to drive a circuit around the island, stopping frequently to sample the local delicacies.

This was long before I began taking food photographs, and I can’t believe I only have one food photo of my entire trip there: a photograph of the tuna lunch we were served. The lunch that I turned my nose up at because I couldn’t stomach the idea of eating nearly raw fish.

An unimpressed Sardinian chef

I was still feeling the effects of the copious wine from the night before. We’d been treated to this fantastic eight-course meal (I still have the menu somewhere in a closet). This feast included suckling pig, tiny whole baby octopus, seafood, pasta, and desserts, and the wine was flowing. The waiters would top up your glass as soon as you turned your back. I had no idea how much I’d consumed.

The following day, I just couldn’t face the thought of raw fish with a hangover. I nibbled a bit of the salad, ate the pickled figs, and the waiter cleared the table. I wasn’t much of a seafood fan then (unlike now). So, faced with what looked to me like massively undercooked, bordering on raw seafood, I baulked.

Then the chef came out of the kitchen and asked me what was wrong with the dish! He was not impressed with me. I mumbled something about not being hungry, wishing the floor would open up and swallow me whole. I can still feel the burn of my blushing today!

Suppose I could only go back in time with my current love of food; how I would lick that plate clean! That tuna is cooked to perfection!

Giant’s Tomb, Sardinia

One of the places we stopped (most of my photos are blurry landscape shots from a moving car) was at a Giant’s Tomb. This remarkable archaeology dates back to the  Bronze Age and the Nuragic civilization.

It was February when I was there. One thing that stood out in my memory was raining mud. A dust storm had swept across the Mediterranean from Morocco, causing the sky to take on a brownish hue. The delicate, talc-like sand was falling in raindrops. This was causing much stress for the men trying to keep the cars clean for presentable car launch publicity photographs.

Here you go, a rare and elusive face photograph of me in all my slightly hung-over glory. The Fiat Idea was launched in 2003, so it’s a pretty old photo. You can see the fine mud drops on the bonnet of the car.

Fast forward thirteen years, and my eldest son and I spent a wonderful hour together preparing culurgiones.

Culurgiones are filled dough pockets similar to ravioli. I was inspired by this recipe.

The dough, filling, and sauce are remarkably easy to make. The trick is to get the stitching process correct so that each filled pocket resembles a wheat sheaf.

I watched this video tutorial about 50 times, I swear. Start at 56 seconds and watch over and over again following along with a culurgione in your hand.

I persevered and my culurgiones began to look more and more like they were supposed to.

What sauce to serve with culurgiones

Since the recipe I used for inspiration didn’t provide the sauce, I asked the only Italian person I knew. He used to spend a month of his childhood summers camping on the island of Sardinia. His parents used to have friends who lived there. He gave me the recipe his mother used to make, for which I am very grateful.

It’s a very simple recipe, but the key is to use fresh, good-quality ingredients. I used fresh basil and garlic grown by my local CSA veg box providers. For the sauce, I used some Cirio passata. The extra virgin olive oil I used was grown by Antonio in the Campania region of southern Italy. It’s distributed by Pomora. I delivered their extra virgin olive oil just the other day. Gorgeous stuff.

I am told that culurgiones are served with only a little bit of tomato sauce. There should still be some white of the pasta showing through the sauce. The way I’ve served them is likely far from traditional. I thought it was rather pretty, and I like putting my twist on things.

In true Italian style, we invited a neighbour over for dinner. He thought it was one of the best meals he’d ever had—restaurant quality, he raved.

I beamed.

Culurgiones – Sardinian Ravioli

Discover the flavours of Sardinia with culurgiones: a traditional Sardinian pasta filled with delicious ingredients.

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Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Italian

Prep Time: 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 35 minutes minutes

Resting/Cooling Time: 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Servings: 80 culurgiones

Calories: 51kcal

Author: Elizabeth

Ingredients

Metric – US Cup Measures

for the pasta dough

• ▢ 250 grams semolina
• ▢ 250 grams Italian ’00’ pasta flour
• ▢ 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil I use Pomora
• ▢ 1 tsp Shetland sea salt
• ▢ 150 ml lukewarm water

for the filling

• ▢ 800 grams potatoes unpeeled weight
• ▢ 50 grams ricotta cheese
• ▢ 50 grams Pecorino romano cheese (or Parmesan cheese)
• ▢ 1 tbsp fresh mint leaves finely chopped
• ▢ 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• ▢ 1 large garlic clove finely chopped

for the tomato sauce

• ▢ 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• ▢ 3 large garlic cloves finely chopped
• ▢ 540 grams passata rustica
• ▢ 1 handful fresh basil leaves torn

to serve

• ▢ fresh basil leaves torn
• ▢ Pecorino romano cheese

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Equipment

1 pasta machine

1 round cutter

1 large cooking pot

1 potato masher

1 sieve

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Instructions 

• First prepare the filling. Peel and cube 800 grams potatoes and cook in boiling, salted water until tender – about 15-20 minutes. Drain and return to the heat for a few minutes to evaporate some more of the liquid.
• Rice the potatoes with a potato ricer or pass them through a fine sieve.
• Add 50 grams ricotta cheese, 50 grams Pecorino romano cheese, 1 tbsp fresh mint leaves (finely chopped), 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 1 large garlic clove, finely chopped, and stir well. Set aside for an hour, at room temperature, to cool.
• To prepare the pasta dough whisk together 250 grams Italian ’00’ pasta flour and 250 grams semolina until combined. Add 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 1 tsp Shetland sea salt and add about 100 ml of 150 ml lukewarm water, adding a tablespoon at a time of the remaining water until a dough forms.
• Knead for two minutes until smooth and elastic, adding a little bit more water at a time if needed. I just dipped my fingers into the water to add it to the dough.
• Cover in cling film and leave for half an hour.
• Cut the dough into two equal portions and run each half through a pasta machine, starting with the thickest setting. Fold the dough into thirds and run through the thickest setting again. Repeat, if needed, to get an even width of pasta. Run the dough through the machine again a few more times, selecting a thinner setting for each run. I rolled mine until it was at the second thinnest setting.
• Using an 8 cm round cutter (I used a glass tumbler) cut the dough into circles and place on a floured surface.
• Place a heaped teaspoonful of the potato filling into the centre of each pasta round.
• Cup the round in the palm of your hand like a taco shape. Pinch about 1 cm of the end together. Push the pinched dough in and slightly to the left, folding the edge of the dough into a bend and pinch that in and slightly over. Repeat on the other side. (Watch the video link above to see how to do this).
• Continue pinching and folding the dough over and down all the way up to the top of the dough and pinch the end closed. You will have a filled pocket resembling a wheat sheaf. Set aside on a floured surface and repeat with the remaining circles.
• Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and boil the culurgiones in batches for five minutes.
• Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. Heat 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan and gently fry 3 large garlic cloves, finely chopped, for a minute or so until its aroma is released. Add 540 grams passata rustica and cook for three minutes.
• Remove the sauce from the heat and stir in 1 handful fresh basil leaves, roughly torn.
• Serve the culurgiones immediately with a little bit of the sauce with extra fresh basil leaves and grated Pecorino romano cheese.
• Leftover culurgiones can be frozen for later. Simply cook from frozen.

Notes

There are regional variations of this dish. Some add gently fried onions to the filling. Others use fresh tomatoes in the sauce, in which case cook them for 8-10 minutes only.

Nutrition

Calories: 51kcal | Carbohydrates: 7g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 2g | Saturated Fat: 0.4g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.2g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 1mg | Sodium: 40mg | Potassium: 83mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 0.4g | Vitamin A: 44IU | Vitamin C: 3mg | Calcium: 12mg | Iron: 1mg

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