An interesting cookbook with unusual homestyle recipes from Sardinia. Not your common spaghetti and meatballs italian cooking but one that includes unusual ingredients like myrtle, bitter honey, and fregula (toasted semolina pasta). There are recipes for mussels, goat, tripe, eel and fresh cheese curd and the commentary that goes alongside (Efisio Farris grew up in Sardina and his family still lives there) makes this book an excellent addition to eclectic food and cooking collections.

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.” . . .read full review