This is a very full page of information. The Corsican way of life is implicated as much as food, drink and the produce of the land. Even it only scratches the surface. A Google search reveals the amazing reach of Corsican cuisine.
Corsican gastronomy is rich and varied, not that you might think so, if you looked through a French pair of spectacles. Many of the food products, as elsewhere, were seasonal and added to the richness and variety of the diet. Many people stick to the habit of eating things in season, even though modern production methods can enable year-round production of almost anything.
Food production has stayed small scale, or relatively so, and thus the products have their own special tastes and textures resulting from the environment in which they have been produced. About 1500 producers sell their products direct. The average size of productive units is only 44 hectares. The same is true for agribusinesses, of which there are 621 in Corsica, of which 242 have no employees, 332 have between 1-9, 44 between 10-49 and a mere 3 have more than 50 employees.
The traditional Corsican kitchen - photo by Marie-Antoinette Guerrini.
The French have a name for locally produced foods; they describe them as being du terroir. There is no real English translation for the concept that refers not just to the land from which the food comes, but also to the taste it imparts. Because 'farming' Corsican style is based on peasant tradition and not (much) on industrial methods, the food produced 'on the land' is really of it. Be sure when you shop in Corsica to try and avoid anything that looks factory produced if you can or better still avoid the supermarket and buy direct. Incidentally there is a wonderful cookbook of which there was an English translation called Cuisine Du Terroir: Lost Domain of French Cooking; it's excellent and though out of print, a secondhand paperback copy is available.
More and more emphasis is being placed on organic production, but much production is organic by its very nature in the small island and give the scale of food production. In the section below on Organic Foods you will find more information. The Corsican organic producers' association is the Civam Bio Corse. Apart from anything else, they have a bio-composting operation at San Giuliano on the east coast.
Rolli Lucarotti's
Recipes from Corsica
If you'd like to take a look at some other Corsican recipes (in French), then go to any of the four sites shown below under the Corsican Food & Drink Websites. The best recipe books are Les Carnets de Cucina Corsa - an association devoted to Corsican cuisine. They are published by the Centre Régional de Document Pédagogique de Corse and the sales counter telephone number is 04 95 51 11 96. One is for autumn/winter - Recettes pour l'autonne et l'hiver and the other for spring/summer - Recettes pour le printemps et l'été; you'll find them in Corsican bookshops, newsagents or at country fairs all through the year. These two publications, spiral bound and 'wipe clean' are by the best of the Corsican cookboks. Vincent Tabarani, the president of Cucina Corsa teaches cookery at the professional high school in Bastia and does many demonstrations at the fairs. There's another Corsican cookery book, called Cuisine Corse by Jean-Christian de Peretti, Paule Erbalunga & Simon Grimaldi (Edisud), or there's Toute la cuisine corse by François Poli or yet again, La Cuisine Corse - de mère en fille. If you want to browse through a list of 24 titles, then go to this link at
