“The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you’re hungry again” – George Miller, film director ('Mad Max', and to calm him down afterwards, 'Happy Feet')
Many years ago, I would have said that my favourite cuisine was French. Then I decided that it was too set in its ways, and actually I preferred Spanish, especially tapas. And even more especially, the modern tapas, which can be works of art in their own right [Ed, such as Pintxos in Bilbao].
I sometimes yearn for the clean, dairy-free flavours of Thai food, with its citrusy tangs, infused with chillies and ginger. I’m always happy with good, modern British. If I could only have one style these days, it would probably have to be anything produced by the amazing Ottolenghi.
But it never really occurs to me to go out to eat Italian-style food. Richard makes outstanding pasta, and his ravioli is top notch. He also assembles stunning pizzas, making his own sourdough base, and I have learned to stop asking for BBQ sauce and pineapple on it.
I hadn’t really thought very much about food in Sardinia, as I sort of lumped it into the “oh-well, it’s-Italian-isn’t-it?” cuisine. But after our two-night crossing from Port Ginesta to Alghero, Richard promised me a celebratory meal. I wrote about it in “Alghero, Sardinia – a social whirl”. I had surprisingly delicious deep-fried sea anemones, followed by spaghetti with lobster. Now, bearing in mind that I was born and brought up in Swansea in the 1960s, spaghetti was something slimy that came in tins with some sweet tomato goo around it. I think my mother occasionally bought it and then made my sister and me eat it, so it didn’t waste.
Even at uni, I was never a ‘spag-bol’ sort of person. Incidentally, in Bologna (one of whose nick-names is ‘la grassa’ or the fat) spaghetti Bolognese isn’t a dish at all. They serve tagliatelle, and the sauce is a ragù. OK, you knew that.
For me to order spaghetti, therefore, was a real surprise (though the lobster bit wasn’t). And it was delicious; a perfect al-dente bite, not quite round, and definitely not slimy. Since then, I have eaten spaghetti a few times, and always with seafood: mussels, plucked from their watery graveyards; clams; squid… In all honesty, it’s not the easiest dish to eat. I’m quite happy twirling my spaghetti around my fork, but sucking seafood from their shells can be a bit messy.
Now, I know many of you think we’re on holiday, but we do eat on board quite a lot. We have a typical galley stove, run off a ‘Campingaz’ bottle (butane). The stove has two rings, an oven and apparently a grill, which I’ve not tried yet. [Ed, I have used it to toast some goats’ cheese on crostini for a salad].
Typical on-board delights might be salad niçoise, aubergine parmigiana, and of course, local fresh pasta.
I don’t concoct elaborate sauces; it’s olive oil with basil or wilted rocket, a good squeeze of lemon, lots of local pecorino (of course), and lashings of black pepper. We had a delicious dish recently: two huge round ravioli each, stuffed with a local cheese. Usually, we eat up in the cockpit, and lay the table nicely, eating romantically by the light of our cockpit table lamp (now that we’ve finally sussed out how it works (Pascal thought it was another warranty issue, but he was just inept at using touch sensors).
The mussels have been a revelation here. I’m very fond of mussels, and love moules-mariniere in France, But I do find that I can’t get that garlicky, moules smell off my hands for 24 hours, despite washing them more often than Lady Macbeth. But here, they serve a “mussel soup”, which we initially thought was going to be a potage, but turned out to be a base of tomato broth in which they steam open the mussels. Given that a mariniere is actually the stripey Breton sweater, I wonder what item of clothing would best describe a tomato soup bowl of mussels? Maybe an apron, given its messy nature?
Breakfast has been a difficult meal to source. We enjoy eating breakfast out, and we’re definitely blessed in the U.K. with establishments that serve a decent breakfast menu, with a wide range of dishes. And yes, I am rather partial to eggs and smashed avocado with lots of chillies. The easiest thing on a boat, I guess, is a bowl of cereal. It’s straightforward to pour something in a bowl and add milk (I’ll come back to milk in a moment). We can set sail, and then eat it on the hoof, and you don’t have to light the grill, and stand there with your finger pressed in on the gas button until the supply warms up, else the flame goes out.
But finding decent cereal is a problem, as I think I’ve said before. In France, it was everything with “chocolat”, and we needed a really big hypermarket to find something a little healthier. It was a similar situation in Spain, and now we’re in Italy, it’s pretty much sweet clusters of sugary stuff, or cornflakes (and they don’t do anything for me). I am also very conscious that, actually, most breakfast cereal is generally a rubbish thing to eat anyway, and counts as highly processed food, added sugar or no. [Ed, Alix doesn’t mention that I very often cut up lovely melons and peaches for breakfast, while she is still asleep.]
Milk, on the other hand, has been another discovery. As a woman who is, shall we say, past the first flush of youth (but only just), I need to keep up my calcium intake. Richard agreed, reluctantly, that we should have long-life milk on board, rather than trying to find fresh milk all the time. It allows us to be more off-grid. Our first purchase (of ‘Lactel’) in France turned out to be very pleasant. We had a couple of not-as-good bottles from Spain, but the stuff we’re using now in Sardinia is excellent. Look out for it, it’s in a yellow carton!
When we were on flotilla, the lead boat “Evensong” had a traditional galley lay out in a U-shape, which meant you could wedge your bum on the part of the furniture behind you. I used bits of the galley to hold on to, if the yacht was a bit bouncy. Bearing in mind that I had to prepare beach party food for up to 30 or so people every fortnight, and a punch-and-dips party on the alternate weeks, I needed to wedge myself in. I soon vetoed any sailing on food prep days. “We’ll be close-hauled, Alix, so we’re going to heel over!”, was not a warning I took kindly to. Missy Bear is a much more open, spacious yacht. It’s not designed for prepping food during hard sailing. It’s designed for either eating ashore, or preparing food while in a harbour. Lunches on longer sailing days need to be planned and assembled beforehand.
If the weather is kind, we can have sandwiches or even a salad. If we have good winds and calm seas, it’s fine to make these as we sail along. Good charcuterie and cheese, with spicy pepper sauce, or mustard is very good. At the other extreme, if there is a bouncy swell, lunch might be a few TUC biscuits with a bit of Philadelphia cheese. (R not impressed and prefers a soft local goats’ cheese).
Cagliari seems to be jam-packed with good restaurants, all with queues outside. On our first evening, we started looking for something about 21.30, and it took us half an hour to get in the right queue and finally get a table. This had to be inside or would have been an even longer wait.
And of course, eating inside in Italy now means you have to show your “green pass”; the covid vaccine certificate QR code. We waved our NHS codes on our phone. Nope, the scanner didn’t work. OK, we said, we’ve got them on the French ‘Touscovid’ App, try that. Nope, it didn’t work. We tried showing her the data. She noted our second vaccine was in March (courtesy of our volunteering at the Great Western). She commented it was a long time ago. Wut??? Anyway, eventually she let us in with a mumbled expression, which we think translated to “Oh go in, but don’t tell anyone!”.
The food was divine (see my starter of slightly crispy octopus on Jerusalem artichoke puree) I then had spaghetti with clams and bottarga. Bottarga is the roe of the grey mullet (or can be bluefin tuna). I suspect here it’s grey mullet. It’s dried and then cured, and is formed into a hard block, which is thinly sliced to serve or grated. You can buy dried, powdered bottarga in the shops and fish markets here. It’s really a provider of the savoury “umami” flavour. I’ve had it in Malaga with Sari and Thorne, served thinly sliced. Richard doesn’t like it as much, but I suspect that is because he knows that grey mullet is a bottom feeder. He can see them in the harbour here in Cagliari, huge shoals of them, ingesting goodness knows what, including holding tank overflow maybe?
With regards to the green pass mentioned above, I’ve since researched that the scanning software app in Italy (VerificaC19 if you are interested) has to version 1.1.0 which has been amended for the NHS code. We each have the scanning app now on our phones, and can demonstrate that we can scan each other’s’ QR code successfully. We had a day of sightseeing today and were able to gain entrance to museums etc with our NHS code. [Ed, Passpartout does it again!]
One thing I haven’t talked about yet is wine. We have a great storage area for bottles in the galley area. I have to confess, the only bottle that’s been in there is some French olive oil from Port-La-Nouvelle market. We buy beers for Richard, and the odd, alcohol-free beer for me. But as yet, we’ve limited our wine consumption to the times that we have a glass ashore. No wine or bubbles as yet on the boat (unless you count Perrier or San Pellegrino).
So, come on Italy, stop this quarantine for British visitors, and give us an excuse to buy some wine for our friends!
P.S. today we acquired our first bottle of fizz. An Italian guy came in single-handed, into the wrong berth (so there were no helpers from the marina), with only one line fixed up (and too short at that), the fenders at the wrong height, and heading straight for our bow with his anchor. We jumped down onto the pontoon, I fended him off, while Richard tried to get his line ashore. Eventually the marina staff came rushing over and helped. Italian skipper even switched off his engine half way through, before he was safely secured!! Anyway, later on, he came over with an apologetic smile and a chilled bottle of prosecco, to say a sincere thank you, which was very sweet of him.