Gallurese Soup
Description
Gallurese soup, as the name suggests, is a typical soup from the Gallura region.
It has peasant origins and used to be considered a poor dish, but we promise it’s delicious! To prepare it you’ll need two different cheeses – panedda and gran campidano – along with stale bread; the result is a main course that is rich and tasty, more reminiscent of a lasagne than of a soup.
If you love traditional Sardinian cuisine and want to bring all the flavours and aromas of this amazing island to your table, prepare gallurese soup by following this recipe.
Ingredients
to recalculate the ingredient amounts
For the recipe
- Stale semolina bread 180 g
- Gran Campidano 180 g
- Panedda 200 g
- Meat stock 670 ml
- Black pepper q.b.
For the stock
- Sheep and lamb meat 330 g
- Celery 150 g
- Onion 1
- Carrot 1
- Salt q.b.
- Pepper q.b.
Instructions
Tips
-
1
To make a delicious gallurese soup, first prepare the meat stock using a mixture of sheep and lamb together with seasoning (celery, carrot and onion).
-
2
Grate the Gran Campidano and Panedda into a bowl, add pepper, mix and set aside.
-
3
Cut the stale semolina bread into thick slices (around 1 cm), line them on a baking dish, then add a layer of cheese and then another of bread. Continue to add layers like this until you have 4 layers of bread.
-
4
Using a fork, make small holes in the top layer of bread, then slowly pour the stock onto it.
-
5
When you have used all the stock, add one last layer of cheese.
-
6
Pre-heat the oven to 200° and bake the gallurese soup for around 30 minutes. When the stock has evaporated and a golden crust has formed on the surface, take your gallurese soup out of the oven and let it rest for a few minutes before serving.
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Variations
This typical Sardinian first course is not, as most of us might think, liquid, but is made up of: layers of stale bread, moistened with hot sheep or lamb broth , grated or flaked cow’s cheese , known as
casgiu spiattatu
, and grated pecorino cheese on top.
As with many aspects of
Sardinian cuisine and dialects
, zuppa gallurese has numerous local variations that differ even from town to town.
This type of “Sardinian lasagna” has numerous variations where “ spianata ” or carasau bread is often used
instead of stale bread
.
The traditional Gallurese soup recipe uses Casizolu, a stretched-curd cow’s milk cheese typical of Sardinia. Since it’s often hard to find, you can use caciocavallo, provola , or panedda instead.
To give your Gallurese soup a more aromatic flavor, you can also add wild fennel, as well as spices and herbs such as mint, parsley, cinnamon, or nutmeg.
Did You Know?
The original name of the dish is “
suppa cuata
,” which literally means
hidden soup
. However, it’s still unclear what this Gallura soup conceals. Some believe the hidden ingredients were
pieces of meat from the broth
, which were left at the bottom; others, however, believe the meaning is linked to the custom of letting the soup rest wrapped in a blanket before serving , hiding it from hungry diners.
Furthermore, the term
inzuppare
derives from the word
zuppa
, a term used to refer to all Italian dishes that involved the use of
bread soaked in water, broth, or milk.
The term ”
suppa,”
on the other hand
,
is a word that was used throughout the Middle Ages for dishes of Italo-Aragonese cuisine.
