Recipe
Pane frattau with tomato, poached egg, and pecorino
Pane carasau is the flatbread of the Sardinian interior, the one they call carta da musica because the sheets are thin enough to read through. It is baked twice, which drives out every trace of moisture, and it was built for shepherds who went up into the hills with the flock for weeks and needed bread that would not turn on them. Kept dry it lasts for months. It is, in the most literal sense, the food of the island I come from, and I say that as somebody whose ancestors were doing exactly that walk.
Pane frattau is what you do with it when you are home. The name is usually explained as rubbed or grated, for the cheese that goes over the top. You soften sheets of it for two seconds in hot broth, layer them with tomato sauce and pecorino like a very fast lasagne, and put a poached egg on the summit. Ten minutes, no oven, four ingredients you already have plus the bread.
My own version of the memory is not a romantic one. It is being fifteen, back from a whole day at the beach at Cala Gonone, sunburnt across the shoulders and hungry in the specific way that only salt water produces, and eating this standing up at the kitchen counter before anyone had finished putting the towels out. Sardinia is my motherland and this is the taste that means arriving there, more than any dish that took longer to make.
Abroad, pane carasau turns up in Italian delis and online, and if you find it, use it. If you do not, thin flour tortillas do the job honestly enough: they are softer to start with, so give them a two-second dip rather than a soak, or you will end up with wallpaper paste.
- Prep 5 min
- Cook 12 min
- Serves 1
- Cost €
Method
- 1
Warm the oil with the garlic in a small pan, add the passata and a pinch of salt, and simmer gently until it thickens a little. Keep it looser than you would for pasta. Fish the garlic out.
8 min
- 2
Heat the stock in a wide shallow pan and hold it just under a simmer. Warm your plate at the same time, because this dish goes cold fast.
3 min
- 3
Poach the egg in a separate small pan of barely trembling water with the vinegar in it, three minutes for a set white and a runny yolk.
Frying it is entirely acceptable and nobody in Sardinia will be dispatched to your address.
3 min
- 4
Dip the first sheet of bread into the hot stock for two seconds, no longer, and lay it on the warm plate. Spoon over a third of the sauce and a dusting of pecorino.
1 min
- 5
Repeat with the second and third sheets, building three layers and finishing with sauce and the rest of the cheese.
2 min
- 6
Slide the egg on top, grind over black pepper, and add the rocket at the side if you want something green against it. Eat immediately.
1 min
Variations
A spoonful of the hot stock poured over the finished stack just before serving is how it is often done at home, and makes it looser and more soup-like. Meat broth is the traditional choice if you have some, and turns it into a richer dish.
For a bigger meal, tuck a slice of prosciutto crudo or some shredded leftover roast meat between the layers.
With pane carasau proper, dip for one second only. It hydrates almost on contact, and a sheet left in the broth while you look for the cheese comes out as a rag.