Luigi Manias is our honey guru and the beekeeper we’ve been working with since the very beginning of Gustiamo. He’s an inspiring intellectual who is considered one of the world’s experts on everything bees and honey. While traveling around Sardegna for Carnival celebrations (did you follow our Sardegna food tour?) we spent quite some time with Luigi and he even invited us to his house in Ales and cooked us dinner. It was a two hours drive away, but that’s how much we love Luigi. And honestly, it was totally worth it!
Luigi is a beekeeper who, well, doesn’t have a sweet tooth at all. Perhaps that’s why he is such a perfectionist when it comes to honey making! He cooked us a Sarda feast, all with fresh ingredients, some of which he grows and forages himself.
Luigi’s cuisine is never overly sweet, still his secret ingredient in the kitchen is honey. He confessed that he adds a tablespoon of one of his raw, organic honeys in pretty much every preparation he does: he finds that honey mellows all the flavors and remarkably helps all the ingredients to combine together and reach a softer texture. And finally, he treated us with the absolutely perfect end of meal, smoked sheep ricotta with honey. Choosing the right pairing was the easiest, Luigi went all in for his favorite: Cardo honey, the quintessential representation of the Sardo landscape.
