Secrets worth sharing

Talk to Italians about Sardinia and they'll puff and throw their hands in the air. Impossible people, they'll say, and suspicious of outsiders to boot.

But on a recent visit to this remote corner of Europe, I met two islanders who are very keen to do business with the outside world. Mario Scala and Pietro Trentini - neither of them born on the island, but both brought up there - set up Euro Choice in November 1993 after years enthusing about Sardinian food.

Pecorino may be well known, but they want to tell the world about bottarga - the salted, dried roe of grey mullet or tuna fish - and two local breads, spianata and carta da musica, to name just three products.

Also on their list are tomato purées and passatas, tasting of the intense Mediterranean sun, bottles of aubergines and cardoons, a wild thistle-like plant similar to an artichoke with a taste akin to celery.

Cardoons go wonderfully with a cool bottle of Vermentino - a grape variety specific to Sardinia which produces a light, fruity and very refreshing wine.

Euro Choice imports a Sardinian oyster mushroom called antunna and sun-dried tomatoes, both of which are excellent and perhaps only just bettered by the Massaria brand from Puglia on the mainland.

There is olive oil from San Guilano, a company which also makes an oil categorised as fruttato (from olives picked during the first two weeks of November) and fruttato intenso (a strongly flavoured oil used most often in minestrone).

From the same stable as the olive oil come tomatoes stuffed with anchovy paste - quite the best I have ever eaten - and olive paste which tastes like it is freshly made.

Over-enthusiasm, you may say, but these products are superb, a reflection of an island a world away from the commercial influences of the rest of Europe.

Sardinia's interior is both the inhospitable and mountainous home of bandits, and carpeted in wild flowers during the late spring and early summer. This is the haunt of the wild boar, a favourite Sardinian dish when cooked with herbs and Vermentino.

From the Sardinian bees come plant-specific honeys - not daintily packaged homogeneous nectar, but honey with real bite and texture.

But of all the foods on offer, it is bottarga, the island's answer to caviar, that is the most intriguing. Grated over pasta dressed with a little olive oil, or over crostini made with fresh tomatoes and celery, bottarga imparts a taste of the sea, a saltiness that brings an extra dimension to the flavour. The bottarga can be pared in thin strips and is a delight with scrambled eggs or potatoes.

Maddalena Bonino, chef at Bertorelli's in Covent Garden, London, makes a kind of taramasalata out of mullet and tuna bottarga, day-old ciabatta, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil and a little garlic.

She recommends it "simply grated over a rocket salad, or with spinach and watercress". It also works well with creamy dishes and avocado.

"It's not cheap, but it is full of flavour and if you know how to use it, margins are not a problem," she says. "Combine it with a cheap ingredient like pasta and give it a go. Don't forget to use something acid, like lemon juice or white wine, which you need to draw out the flavour."

Carta da musica, although inadequately described as a poppadom without the spice, is served warm in Sardinian restaurants, with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of bottarga. It can also be served with a little chopped rosemary.

Carta da musica - the name stems from its similarity in texture to old music paper - is made using a mixture of coarse and fine hard wheat flour with salt, yeast and water. The dough is then cut into discs and baked in an oven where they puff up to about 12 inches and acquire a slight golden tinge.

The trick with this bread is to run a knife around the edge and split it top from bottom. The halves are stacked and, when cool, are run through the oven again to emerge as crisp discs.

Scala and Trentini used to discard the burnt bits from carta da musica, but they decided to start selling them to put in soup. They are now so popular that the company has to deliberately burn several batches in order to meet demand.

Spianata, similar to pitta but with far more texture and bite, is also made using a hard wheat flour and baked for about half an hour in a proving oven. In Britain, this bread is about 40% more expensive than pitta, although it is difficult to compare the taste of the two products.

At one family lunch in Sardinia, stale spianata was cooked in boiling water as if it were pasta. Served with a fresh tomato sauce, basil and pecorino cheese it was hard to resist second helpings. It was even harder to make it through the following six courses served to us in the shade of a Sardinian shepherd's cottage on a blisteringly hot day.

This is an island rich with some of the most exciting food, and the Sardinians know a good thing when they see it. "In Sardinia," says Trentini, "we eat nothing but the best."

• San Guilano extra virgin olive oil: £4.25 per litre

l San Guilano stuffed tomatoes: £3.95 for 280g

l Rau-Berchidda Corbezzolo honey: £4.60 for 50g

l Spinata: £10 for 400g

l Carta da Musica: £2.30 for 500g

l Grated mullet bottarga: £8.50 for 100g

Euro Choice, 283 Holmesdale Road, London SE25 6PR Tel: 081-653 9422