Recipe
Gallurese bread and cheese bake with greens
Gallura is the north-east corner of Sardinia, granite and cork oaks and wind, and its most famous dish is a lie in two directions. Zuppa gallurese is not a soup, and its other name, suppa cuata, means hidden soup, which is not much of a correction. What it actually is: stale bread soaked in broth, layered with two kinds of cheese and herbs, and baked until the top blisters and the inside goes to something between a pudding and a lasagne with the pasta taken out.
It was built out of nothing. Yesterday's bread, the broth left over from boiling meat for something else, and whatever cheese was in the house. Then, in the way these things go, the poorest dish on the island got promoted and became wedding food. In Gallura it still turns up at the long tables, in trays the size of a door, carried out before the meat as though it were a light little something.
Sardinia is the land I come from, and if I had to hand somebody one dish to explain how the island thinks about food, it would probably be this rather than anything with lobster in it. Nothing wasted, almost no money spent, three hours of a hot oven and a crowd fed. My own memory of it involves a wedding near Tempio, being about eleven, and working out at the end of the first course that there were five more to come and that I had made a serious tactical error.
The broth is the whole dish, so use something you would happily drink. Weak stock gives you wet bread and there is nowhere for it to hide. And use bread that has genuinely gone stale, two or three days old: fresh bread collapses into mush the moment the broth touches it.
- Prep 15 min
- Cook 35 min
- Serves 4
- Cost €
Method
- 1
Heat the oven to 190°C fan and oil a deep baking dish. Wilt the greens in a pan with 1 tbsp of the oil and the garlic, then tip them into a sieve and press hard with the back of a spoon until no more water comes out. Chop roughly.
Take the squeezing seriously. Wet greens are the one thing that makes this dish soggy in the middle.
6 min
- 2
Drain the mozzarella on kitchen paper while you work. It carries a surprising amount of liquid.
2 min
- 3
Dip each slice of bread in the hot stock for two or three seconds and lay them out to cover the base of the dish, tearing pieces to fill the gaps.
4 min
- 4
Scatter over a third of the greens, a third of the mozzarella, a third of the grated cheese, and some of the herbs. Season lightly, remembering the stock and the cheese are already salty. Repeat for three layers, finishing with grated cheese on top.
6 min
- 5
Pour over enough of the remaining hot stock to come about halfway up the side of the dish, and press the whole thing down firmly with a spoon. It should be thoroughly soaked, not swimming.
2 min
- 6
Bake until the top is brown and crackling and the edges are bubbling.
35 min
- 7
Rest it for ten minutes before cutting, or it will not hold its shape on the plate.
10 min
Variations
The real thing uses fresh Sardinian casizolu or a young pecorino alongside the grated mature cheese, and broth from boiled meat. If you have made a chicken stock from a carcass, this is the best possible use for it.
Smoked scamorza in place of the mozzarella takes it somewhere darker and is very good in winter.
Shredded leftover roast chicken or lamb between the layers turns it from a side into the main event. It reheats better than almost anything in this book: cut a square cold, microwave for two minutes, and it comes back properly.