Globecooking recipe : Seadas (Sardinia) #readcookeat

I recently finished reading Under A Sardinian Sky by Sara Alexander, which is halfway between chicklit and historical fiction. (Click through to read my review.) It is set in post World War II Sardinia and is packed with evocative descriptions of the island's food, all of which I've bookmarked, so I'm sure I'll be trying some more of them in the not too distant future. The first one that I recreated was something that I knew would definitely appeal to the Madhouse family :

p33 The afternoon trickled through another bottle of each digestif, alongside plentiful servings of Maria's seadas, thin pastry-encased slices of cheese, pan-fried till crispy on the outside and oozing on the inside, topped with a drizzle of the neighbour's acacia honey.

These days, seadas are commonly eaten as a dessert, but originally they were served as a main meal. I couldn't convince the kids to dowse their cheesy parcels in honey, so I served them for lunch with mashed potatoes and cherry tomatoes. The gooey cheese filling was a unanimous hit and frying pastry actually works better than I expected, but I think I'd oven bake them next time, just to make them slightly healthier (or less unhealthy, at least !).

Seadas

ingredients :

1 sheet of ready-made shortcrust pastry 

cheese - traditionally pecorino, made with sheep's milk

olive oil for frying

You can, of course, make your own pastry from scratch, but it was the middle of a heatwave and any shortcuts that got me out of the kitchen were more than welcome ! Use a large cookie cutter to cut out discs of pastry.

I couldn't find pecorino, which would be the authentic Sardinian option, so I went for a mixture of tomme, which is a French cheese made with sheep's milk, and asiago, which is an Italian cheese made with cow's milk. Looking online, I saw several websites saying that parmesan can be substituted for pecorino too.

Hold a disc of pastry in the palm of your hand, lay several chunks of cheese on one half, flip over the other side of the pastry and crimp the edges with your fingers or a fork to seal.

Heat some olive oil in a large pan and fry on both sides in batches until golden brown. 

Drain on kitchen paper and serve, as a savoury meal or drizzled in honey for dessert.

The gooey, salty cheese perfectly complements the crispy, flaky pastry and they only take minutes to prepare.

*** Don't miss my country-by-country globecooking recipe index ***

Linking up with the #readcookeat challenge over at Chez Maximka.