Filindeu
Description
Among the various types of pasta that define Sardinia’s culinary tradition, Su Filindeu is one of the best suited for soups and broths, thanks to its extremely thin texture and quick, simple cooking.
The name Filindeu is said to mean “threads of God,” as it consists of an intricate weave of ultra-thin semolina pasta strands, meticulously stretched by hand. It’s an extremely challenging preparation, passed down through generations in Nuoro, and today only a few people are still able to make it. For this reason, we recommend purchasing it pre-made.
According to the Barbagia tradition, this soup was served to pilgrims traveling from the Church of the Rosary in Nuoro to the Sanctuary of San Francesco in Lula.
Made from a dough of durum wheat semolina, Su Filindeu is cooked in sheep broth, whose flavor is enhanced by the final touch of grated Sardinian pecorino cheese.
Ingredients
to recalculate the ingredient amounts
- Filindeu 160 g
- Grated Gran Campidano cheese 100 g
- Water 1000 ml
- Mutton 600 g
- Celery 50 g
- Carrot 50 g
- Onions 80 g
- Potatoes 120 g
- Dried tomatoes 40 g
- Parsley 15 g
Instructions
- 1 To prepare Su Filindeu, start with the sheep broth: fill a large pot with water and add the cleaned sheep meat. Cook it over low heat with the lid on for about 4 hours, together with the dried tomatoes, celery, carrot, and chopped parsley.
- 2 For the last 30 minutes of cooking, add the onions and potatoes as well, to create a flavorful broth and achieve the right consistency for all the ingredients.
- 3 At this point, strain the broth and set the solids aside. Return the broth to the heat, bring it to a boil, and cook the Su Filindeu pieces in it for about 3 minutes, after breaking them into 3–4 cm sections.
- 4 Serve the soup piping hot, with a generous sprinkle of grated pecorino cheese.
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Did You Know?
There are now only a handful of people who still master the technique for preparing Filindeu, despite it being a recipe dating back around 300 years, passed down from generation to generation and preserved unchanged to this day.
Su Filindeu, despite its complexity — or perhaps precisely because of it — has attracted the curiosity of many renowned figures in the culinary world, from British chef Jamie Oliver to Carlo Petrini, who made Filindeu a Slow Food heritage product. Yet, none of them have managed to master the art of making this pasta. The technique is so intricate that even Jamie Oliver, who has been working with all kinds of pasta for over twenty years, traveled to Sardinia to learn it but eventually had to give up due to its extreme difficulty.
The dough used to make Su Filindeu is made simply from durum wheat semolina and water. It’s kneaded by hand until it becomes elastic, then rolled and stretched to create countless strands as thin as hair. Hence the name “Su Filindeu”, meaning “the threads of God”: each folding step doubles the strands, stretching them further and making them increasingly fine.
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