Bitter Honey & a Stony Island

by

Nicki Leone

“It is market day. We turn up the Largo Carlo-Felice, the second wide gap of a street, a vast but very short boulevard, like the end of something. Cagliari is like that: all bits and bobs. And by the side of the pavement are many stalls . . . This is the meat and poultry and bread market. There are stalls of new, various-shaped bread, brown and bright:  there are tiny stalls of marvelous native cakes, which I want to taste; there is a great deal of meat and kid: and there are stalls of cheese, all cheeses, all shapes, all whitenesses, all the cream colours, on into daffodil yellow . . .”

—D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia

Efisio Farris’s book, Sweet Myrtle and Bitter Honey, is a book of unexpected pleasures and surprises. It is not just a cookbook of esoteric recipes from a part of the world that most Americans would be hard pressed to point to on a map, although some of the recipes are, indeed, obscure. It is not a rosily nostalgic memoir of a bygone era, although it is full of memory and love. It is not a travel book filled out with pictures and recipes, although it will make you want to visit what D.H. Lawrence called “the stony island.”

It is, however, very much what the title says it is—a book about “the Mediterranean flavors of Sardinia.” It is a book not of recipes, but about food, and taste, and how people eat in one part of the world. And it does an exceptionally good job. 

Unlike most cookbooks that concentrate on a single region, Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey doesn’t leave the reader (or cook) feeling frustrated because they will never breathe the sea air of Sardinia or nibble on pane carasau (Sardinian “music bread”) in a sunny olive grove. Although the book is both a memoir and a paean to a certain culture and the author-chef’s native cuisine, Farris is as interested in making the reader understand the tastes of Sardinia—the wild asparagus that grow all over the island, for example—as he is in teaching anyone how to cook it in a risotto.

There are three things that I look for whenever I am considering purchasing a new cookbook: it has to be practical, it has to teach me something I didn’t know about food, and it has to make me hungry.  Farris manages to do all of these things within the first ten pages of the book. His “table of contents” is actually an extended recipe list, backed up at the end by a careful index—de rigueur for any cookbook to be considered practical. And the recipes themselves—“mussels on the half shell with spicy tomato relish,” “pasta with baby artichokes, salad of arugula,” “ricotta and walnuts”—were more than enough to make me hungry.  However, what really sets Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey apart from other cookbooks devoted to a regional cuisine is the effort Farris makes to bring the reader into the rhythm of life in his native island. Recipes are not just introduced with small personal anecdotes, but almost explained, placed within the seasonal routines of his family and neighbors and Sardinia as a whole. The introduction is titled “History Matters” and opens with the following—well, I’d almost be tempted to call it a mission statement: “From the moment you sit down at our table, the important thing is not how much we serve you but that we welcome you by serving the best of what we have.”

That opening line sets the tone for the entire book—devoted, one might say, to the “best of what we have.” The chapter on bread tells you not only how to make the flat bread called “music bread”—so named because it resembles the parchment paper used for sacred choral music—but also explains the ritual of “baking days” in his mother’s kitchen, in his neighbors’ kitchens, in perhaps every kitchen in the town.  “In Orosei,” says the author, “there were (and still are) only two professional bakers.”

Farris refers to Sardinia as an island where “sheep outnumber people three to one” and yet this rural, pastoral haven has a rich culinary tradition—thanks, perhaps, to Sardinia’s central location in the Mediterranean Sea and to centuries of cultural invasions and conquests. The food shows complex influences from the Italian, Greek, Spanish, and Moorish cultures, but it also makes the most of the best of the island itself. The many varieties of fish and seafood, lamb and pork, the artichokes, melons and asparagus that grow wild in the rocky soil, and the endless variations of homemade pecorino and ricotta cheeses. 

Most of the recipes can be made with things found in a well-stocked supermarket. But there are a few ingredients that might take some hunting—the “bitter honey” of the title is one item that will cost you about twenty dollars a jar if you want the real thing. There are also a few “signature” dishes that are obviously island specialties of the sort the author remembers with great fondness, but accepts that they may be an acquired taste most won’t trouble to pursue: “If I cannot come home in the spring,” he writes, “my mother can still save me cordedda or tattaliu for my next visit.” Cordedda, I’m sorry to say, is braided lamb intestine. Tattaliu, I’m ever sorrier to say, is braided goat intestine and organs. 

Regional oddities aside, however, Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey is an uncommonly appealing book, with recipes that seem to combine the best of flavors from an island that has been a crossroads of the Mediterranean. The watermelon salad with ricotta, arugula and walnuts is delicious. The pan-seared scallops with fregula (a kind of pasta similar to couscous) and roasted vegetables is intensely flavorful. And the Sardinian shepherd’s soup, with lamb, fresh mint and pecorino cheese, is the kind of thing a person could live on for months.

I know that there are people out there who buy cookbooks just to read them, and this is the kind of book that would make them happy. What makes me happy is that Sweet Myrtle & Bitter Honey is also the kind of book you can really take exploring, even if you are only exploring in your own kitchen.


Nicki Leone showed her proclivities early when as a young child she asked her parents if she could exchange the jewelry a well-meaning relative had given her for Christmas for a dictionary instead. She earned her B.A. in Russian and Middle Eastern History from Boston College, supporting her college career with a part-time job in a bookstore. Since then, she has been in and out of academic institutions, but has always managed to work with books no matter what. She began working for Bristol Books, an independent bookstore in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1993, and three years later became its manager, which is where she stayed for the next fifteen years. Currently she works for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, developing marketing and outreach programs for independent bookstores. Nicki is a book reviewer for several magazines, an occasional on-air book reviewer and commentator for the Wilmington public radio station WHQR, and a co-host on the television program “Let's Read” on UNCW. She is one of the founders of The Cape Fear Crime Festival, an annual book festival for mystery readers and writers, and currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers Network. She manages all this by the grace of a very patient partner and the loving support of three dogs and two cats. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it