Posts filed under 'Puglia'
This is another dish from last Monday’s dinner. It’s an antipasto/appetizer from Puglia. Although recipes I found when I first tried to make it called for using vegetable broth to cook it, I soon discovered that I could make the vegetable broth and cook it all at the same time. It is a very healthy dish in the highest level of Mediterranean attention to vitamins, fiber and animal fat completely replaced with healthy olive oil. I cannot tell you where to buy dried fave in your country, but I know people have bought them in every country I know. If all you can find are fave with their skins, you can use them, but it will have to cook longer and you will need to use a food mill to remove the skins which I am told cause really dramatic intestinal gas.
I was served this garnished or plain in Puglia several times, but this version is my favorite one so far. I ate this by itself for supper yesterday. Jump to the recipe:
Purea di Fave
1 carrot cleaned and diced
1 leg of celery cleaned and diced
1 onion cleaned and diced
1 small dried red pepper crushed
1 teaspoon salt
water to cover
1 large or 2 medium potatoes peeled and diced
250 g or 1/2 pound dried fave/favas/broadbeans without skins
water as needed
salt to taste
Garnish:
red sweet pepper/peperone/capsicum, cleaned and cut in thin slivers
good olive oil
salt to taste
In a tall pot, put the first list of vegetables and salt, then cover with water and bring to a boil. When it is boiling, add the diced potato and water to keep it covered. When it comes back to a boil, add the dried fave and more water to cover.
Cook this at a simmer for about 45 minutes, adding water periodically so that there is always about 1/2″ or one finger’s thickness of water over the top of the vegetables. At 45 minutes, take a fava out and bite it. It should be soft throughout. If it isn’t cook a bit more until it is. Check for salt at this point and stir in more until it tastes right to you.
You can use a stick blender to puree this in the pot, or you can cool it a bit and put it through a medium-fine plate on a food mill. If you do that, you will need to rewarm it before serving.
Before serving, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and quickly fry the pepper slivers with a bit of salt. Scatter them over the purea, drizzle the pink oil as well, and then add a thread of raw oil. Serve warm.
Leftovers will need a bit of added water to become semi-liquid again. You can, however, make this quite a while ahead and keep it in the refrigerator, then warm the amount you want to serve.
April 16th, 2008
Today alisonk came to lunch. She is doing a low carbohydrate regime, so I had to whip up some flour-free goodies. For a first course in place of pasta or risotto, we had a mushroom soup. I made the basic soup a day ago because most soups get better for sitting. When I reheated it I added the part that might not have refrigerated well.
As you can see, it is very dark and filled with mushrooms. The following recipe made soup for two.
No Carbohydrate Mushroom Soup
1 pound (.5 kilo) champignon or button mushrooms, cleaned and sliced. stems chopped
2 tablespoons butter
about .75 quart or liter of strong beef broth
salt to taste
heavy cream to taste
In a heavy pot I sautéed the mushrooms in the butter until they were quite browned and almost dried. Then I added the beef broth. I allowed this to cook and cook down several times, adding water to bring it up to level each time. Because I used “Better Than Bouillon” for the broth I added and needed no salt. When the whole thing was thoroughly infused, I poured it into a container and refrigerated it.
Today, a few minutes before I needed it, I warmed it up almost to a simmer and then added heavy cream, stirring it in, until it tasted balanced and rich. I ladled it into two deep bowl/cups and this is what happened. 
The verdict was “Good!”
For main course, or secondo, we ate Pollo fra Diavolo from this page.
With it we ate a cabbage dish from Puglia that I once had made into a pasta, but today served it as it was meant to be. Because there is no chance at bread, pasta or dessert, I changed the fat used from oil to duck fat, but it will be good without it if you are not as lucky as we are.
Cavolo Pugliese or Pugliese cabbage
This would have been enough for four people normally, but this was a slender menu indeed.
about 3 cups of slivered fresh cabbage
2 small hot red peppers peperoncini
about 2 tablespoons oil or fat
salt to taste
5 cherry tomatoes, quartered
Heat a big frying pan with the fat you will use. Crumble the pepper into it (or take a pinch from a jar of crushed red pepper.) Add the cabbage and toss it about a bit to get the fat distributed. Continue to cook it, stirring once in a while, until some of the edges start to brown and there are no really hard parts left. Add about 1/2 teaspoon or a decent sized pinch of salt, stir and taste. Add salt until it seems right to you. Toss in the tomato pieces and stir until they wilt a bit. Serve.
I had prepared a salad, but there was no room left for it. We had eaten well.
March 4th, 2008
This is the 50th week of Presto Pasta Roundup and I promised come hell or high water I would provide a pasta this time. Here is one of the best. It is a traditional recipe and not one of my own, but I’m proud to present it because it isn’t even well known around Italy and it is way too good to miss.
Those are mussels growing in a mussel farm in Australia. Farming mussels has made them available in places that never heard of them 60 years ago. Places where it is too hot to ship them, too cold for nature to grow them, with farming can provide them to almost everybody these days. The farmed mussels are a lot cleaner and easier to prepare than the wild ones I once knew. It really has made mussels a busy day choice, because they are cooked in a flash.
That’s what they look like raw. All you have to do is wash them under running cool water and tear off any “beard” that’s clinging, which resembles Spanish Moss. It’s how the mussel attaches himself to things. Throw away any that are lying there open and don’t close when touched. Those aren’t good. Once they are cleaned they need to be cooked quickly, because the cleaning process is the last thing you do before preparing them. Recipe follows the jump
In a big pot melt 2 ounces of butter and sauté in it a few halved cloves of garlic. Add about 1/2 cup or so of white wine. Toss in the mussels, heat on high, pop on a lid and cook until they open. It doesn’t take long, so keep an eye in them.
You can either proceed with 1) eating 2) preparing a dish or 3) storing them immediately. To store, remove them from their shells, throwing away any that are shut, because those also aren’t good. Put them into a container with the cooking juices and cover well, then refrigerate them.
These are fagioli or beans as imaged by Ciccio, a great blog. If yours look like that, pick out the white ones, soak and then cook them, because we want canellini.
These are cavatelli, a Pugliese pasta used in this dish. 
or use gnocchetti sardi which are almost exactly the same thing 
or even casariccia. 
I think I am getting carried away with the possibilities at IndustryPlayer!
To serve 6 lucky eaters you will need:
1.5 kilos or 3 pounds of mussels cleaned and cooked as above
.5 kilo or 1 pound of cooked white beans
2 cloves of garlic
7 to 8 tablespoons of great olive oil
1 peperoncino, or small dried chili pepper, crushed
5 or 6 cherry tomatoes, halved
salt and pepper to taste
600 grams or 18 ounces of dry pasta
Heat a big pot of water to boiling, add a very large 4 finger pinch of salt and the pasta. Note the time and the time the package says to cook your pasta.
Heat a wide frying pan with the oil, then add the garlic cloves. Sauté for a bit but do not brown the garlic as it is there to scent the oil. Add the beans and the cherry tomatoes, stirring around, then just before the pasta will be done, add the mussels with their cooking liquor, with a few shells for atmosphere.
Taste for seasoning and correct. I do not think you will need salt. You do NOT eat cheese on this pasta. (I know that makes some of you immediately want to have cheese on it and say, “So there!” Don’t.
This is how they were served to Luchena in Puglia.
I think this is one of the great dishes of Italy. You need the best ingredients you can find because there are so few of them and each must star. The first time I ever tasted it I screamed or fainted or did something embarrassing that I’ve forgotten. “This is the ONE!” came into it somehow.
February 28th, 2008
So I have been repairing Puglia posts from last year and adding back the photos that got lost in the move. How I would like to be there this gray day!
Puglia the Beautiful
Puglia: Food
Puglia restaurants
January 14th, 2008
I’ve been reading lists all over the internet food world based on the best recipes of 2007, either their own trials or recipes they’ve picked up from this site or that one. I have never done a list like that for Think On It, so I thought I would instead farm the entire life of this blog and list what has been mentioned most often or eaten most often here casa mia.
Think On It, as a food blog, is in main dedicated to food prepared according to the basic tenets of Italian cookery, but simple enough for anyone to make. I mean anyone, and that includes you as well as the cook who has been turning out great meals for twenty years. I avoid piling up flavors and sauces, because that’s not Italian!
Toasted leeks and pecorino pasta is still Art’s favorite pasta. I am really proud of that, that living in Italy where pasta is tossed about like M&Ms Art still likes one of my original recipes the best! What would one do for reassurance without one’s friends?
The best carrots I know are still the best to me. I made this dish for a shared Christmas dinner this year and they disappeared like snow in Miami. I left out the thyme, too, because the real secret is the cumin, or comino. For a former carrot-avoider, this recipe has turned out to really have legs. Try them. (For some reason this link won’t work. Go to: http://www.judithgreenwood.com/thinkonit/the-best-carrots-i-know/
My vote for best one dish meal from the pages of Think On It, is Insalatona fra diavolo. I always freeze some pitted black cherries so that I can have this salad when cherries aren’t in season (and because you can’t buy bags of frozen plain cherries in my city.) When they are used up I have to wait until cherries come back in May and it makes me sad. The recipe actually makes two meals I love at once, and there can’t be anything wrong with that idea!
Antipasto is well represented here, but on another international food site Tiny Baked Potatoes has been the hands down winner, voted among the top one hundred appetizer recipes worldwide. I can only take credit for figuring out how you can make this Pugliese dish at home, if you, like I, can’t rush off to Puglia today. How I would love to.
My most often cooked non pasta first course, or primo, is surely Toasted Leek and Potato Soufflé, a dish I find beautiful and absolutely delicious. I know it looks difficult, but it isn’t at all, and you don’t have to use a soufflé dish to cook it, although if you have one, why not?
The vote for best vegetarian dish is split. The first one has to be Pasta e Fagioli which is a feel-good dish without equal. I can make a little for just me, or a lot for a crowd and it always is good. When the weather is awful, this makes up for it. Just leave out the ham and you can feed it to a Bhuddist.
The second one is la Bomba although it is not Italian other than that I developed it here in my Italian kitchen using ingredients I bought in Italy. My evenings in Paris are about food. Sad, isn’t it? Just leave out the ham, and you’ll never miss it. I love, love, love this way with lentils. Ahh, Paris, how you inspire me.
Best cucina alta, the Italian version of haute cuisine, dish is the veal stuffed with veal on that page. I’ve come up with one small improvement lately, which is the inclusion of finely minced prosciutto crudo, or parma ham in the stuffing. This is a dish that goes on giving, because if you don’t slurp the cooking broth down immediately, you can have it another day with some tiny stuffed pasta, like capelletti or tortellini, or you can freeze it and cook another meat in it another day. I consider that practical as all get out.
Okay, that’s nine choices, and everybody does ten. The tenth is waiting for you. Please comment and tell me about something you’ve cooked from here and how it came out for you. If it wasn’t a success, tell me, because I’m determined to make every recipe just right.
If you click on something and there’s no photo, it may be that it’s a Flickr feed that isn’t working. Flickr has become irregular in what they show and I can’t count on them any more. That’s a shame, ma è la vita, sì?
December 31st, 2007
When I woke up and climbed the stairs this morning to make coffee, look who was looking into the window. Remember her? At first I thought she was blooming there to give me a little summery pleasure. Then I went outside and I realized she was trying to get in.
Day dawned with a really hard frost. I tried to dress for it as I prepared to go to the Pugliese fruit and vegetable vendors. They are only at market on Saturday, so it’s buy today or eat supermarket produce. Our supermarkets sell good food, but not as good as this produce that trucks up from Foggia every week. Only Monday I bought Italian white grapes at the Coop, but they were only juicy and sweet. There was nothing about them that shouts grape like the ones grown in Puglia under nets.
Anyway, I’ve decided that this is a budget tip. Shop outside when it’s cold and blowy and you won’t hang around photographing fashions or dawdling through the streets being tempted to buy ridiculous things you really don’t need.
Here’s what we’ll cook this week. It cost €8.80, or about US$13.20.
There are four small artichokes called violetta. Nice name for an artichoke, no? There’s a nice head of romaine or insalata romana. The white grapes I like fill a colander, and there’s an entire tray of tiny new spinach. Those tiny tomatoes will pop up now and again whenever wanted.
Before I left I checked the pasta shelf, where I seal up opened pasta. The unopened pasta occupies a very large space in my pantry armoire. That little chest holds the spices not used in Italian cookery, and it isn’t Italian, either. What’s this?
Gasp! There are two empty jars and the others are close to empty too. I haven’t even made pasta for Presto Pasta Night in two weeks. Polenta, yes, pasta no. What kind of Italian cook doesn’t make pasta? My face is red.
I rushed back from market, abandoning all foolish pastimes, to where it may be a cool 18°C but there’s a radiator to embrace. Later tonight there will be chow. Ciao!
December 1st, 2007
Saturday I went to town, both for the market and because I needed to pry myself from my mousehole, to which I had become far too adapted when I wasn’t feeling so well. I lost an entire size in a week! I don’t recommend the method, however. Still, when my jeans wouldn’t stay where I put them, and I pulled out that tight, black pair and zipped them on, it was pretty interesting from my point of view.
Everybody was bundled up. Except me. It was cool and I was wearing this knit jacket, but they were wearing down jackets, all black but one. 
As the day wore on it got hot, but they only unzipped their jackets. Why do Italians feel the cold so much?
I visited friends here and there. I made an appointment and got a haircut. I lunched on ravioli ai porcini and it was splendid, the simplest rendition I have ever had and my favorite waitress in the world was right to recommend not using the cheese on it. I only ate half, so she proposed next time she’d give me a half portion. Oh, and they’ve added flavored ciabatte to the bread basket, which is a brilliant move in a place where the local bread is salt free! They make it in house, too, and the onion one was great. I drank my first glass of wine in over a week. Good.
The haircut is good as usual, but figlio Andrea was given the styling and made it so crazy I rinsed my hair when I got home. What gets into those two kids? Sister does that too, although Mata at least uses something flexible rather than what seems to be Elmer’s Glue-all. That family is one of the best things in Italy. Mum offered me homemade pastry as well as an espresso. I wish I could have eaten it.
So, I returned home with two tiny artichokes, a kilo of Pugliese tomatoes (in spite of Jeffo’s objections, they still truck them up here from Foggia,) a big bunch of white grapes that make my lips curl up into a smile, and two very small eggplant/aubergine. And 4 belts, all looking as if they might have come off Marc Jacobs’ runway, given me by a woman in Patrizia’s shop because I was the only one they fit. Three years ago I searched all over for a 24″ belt and never found a one. Now I have four, all in shades of red, red/brown and ranging from glazed leather to suede. The buckles are very nice indeed.
I need to get out more.
October 29th, 2007
Everybody in Italy is yelling at me, “Those aren’t orecchiette!” And they’re right, they aren’t. They are the same boiling water and flour pasta, but shaped a different way. They might be considered cauliflower ears (orecchiette is little ears) except the traditional recipe is not made with cauliflower, but with broccoli.
This, unlike almost all the recipes here, is not my recipe. You would not like the recipe I came up with for this pasta dish when I tried to recreate it on my own. It was never good, no matter how good the broccoli or how authentic the pasta, so in desperation I went to the website for Bari, Italy, where this dish comes from. The local radio station had posted an official recipe with an ingredient I would never have guessed if I’d tried for years. Without it this is just broccoli with some pasta. Meh. With it, it’s “Orecchiette con broccoletti”. The secret ingredient disappears completely, but creates the genuine flavor although it’s unidentifiable. The Baresi use what we in the US called broccoli rabe. I like it, but I love broccoli, so that’s what I make and it is grudgingly acceptable to the Baresi.
This is the first broccoli of the year. It is not the best broccoli of the year, because it hasn’t been cold yet and that’s what makes broccoli go from nice to slap-me-in-my-face wonderful. There’s a whole nutty thing that goes on in frostbitten broccoli. Still, not having seen a stalk of broccoli since May, I was pretty darned happy to see this nice big flower in the market Wednesday afternoon.
Here’s what goes into this pasta for two people:
200 grams of orecchiette or another similar pasta
8 ounces of fresh broccoli; stems, leaves and all, cut into smallish pieces
2 tablespoons of good olive oil
2 fat cloves of garlic, sliced
2 hot chilies, broken up with fingers – mine were the standard little hot ones found here, you might want to use one if yours are hot or if you feel wimpy
2 anchovy fillets
Put a big pot of water on to boil and then clean, cut and slice the various ingredients. Heat the oil in a large frying pan and put the broken chilies, the garlic slices and the anchovy fillets into it to gently fry. This happens to be one of only a few recipes in which you brown garlic, but you can’t burn it or it will all be ruined forever, like Scarlet O’Hara. So keep the heat low and just let the oil simmer.
Once the water is boiling, throw a lump (an all-fingers pinch) of coarse salt into it and then the pasta. Check the package for cooking time, because you need to know the estimated finish time. Stir it up and then let it boil. About three minutes before the cooking time elapses, add the broccoli into the pasta. Take a ladle full of the pasta water and spill it into the frying pan so the garlic won’t burn.
A minute before you expect the pasta to be done, start biting it to test it. You will want it to be a little less done than al dente. When it is, drain everything that is in the pot and put it into the frying pan, stirring it around and getting it well covered in the garlicky sauce. The pasta continues to cook during this, and this kind of pasta goes soft very fast, so it should go in a bit too firm. Once it’s mixed and wonderful, drizzle a little raw oil over it and serve it up. Delicious.
Even if you think you don’t like anchovies, do try this, because you can’t tell they’re in there. Promise. I buy them in little jars that I keep in the fridge, as you can see from the fogged up glass in the picture. Do not put cheese on this, because it ruins it. Baresi propose that you brown breadcrumbs in oil to sprinkle over it, but I never bother. And now, we will send this off to Presto Pasta Night.
October 5th, 2007
Memories of a rainy Saturday afternoon in Lecce, Puglia. Everything in this photo is sweet. Everything. It’s not tourist season, there’s practically no one on the street, so it must be for the Leccesi.
This too, a mortadella made of almond paste. What a sausage!
October 2nd, 2007
When we set off for a few days in Puglia, we talked about ordering half portions and sharing what we ordered, and with that thinking, I gaily surmised that from Thursday night until Sunday night we could taste between 18 and 21 dishes. Maybe even more, because we planned to call a friend in Brindisi and ask him to join us for a meal with the directive, “You have to share.”
The truth was, we couldn’t even come close to that. We couldn’t get hungry enough at the next meal to have a meal. What was good was darned good, and what was really good was fabulous. The result was that we ate most of what we were served and left tables feeling like we’d just finished the annual holiday feast.
It’s possible with a month of travel that one could return and entitle something “Eat Puglia!” Or maybe it would take a year.
Thursday evening, we met with Armando at Ostuni, who had the key to our house. He invited us to Café Cavour, an elegant wine bar, for drinks before dinner, because he had a date with “Irish girls” for dinner. Those Irish girls get around, apparently, because although Armando kept trying to take us out for a meal, he seemed to be regularly tied up with “Irish girls.” At the café we drank wine and they arrayed dish after dish of nibbles that came with the wine. Taralli—a tiny bagel-looking snack that is made in different flavors all over Puglia. It’s cooked like bagels, too, first boiled and then baked to crunchy. There were nuts and tiny Pugliese olives. There were puffy things that tasted a bit like pizza. Not understanding the challenge to come, we ate some of those snacks.
Because these images are mostly menus, I have made them thumbnails, which will pop open if you click on them.
Later, Armando walked us up the street to la Maddonina. At first sight it seemed he’d led us to exactly the kind of place we said we didn’t want. It was tiny and done up cute. The menu was laminated in plastic, and the waiter spoke a little English. We explained to him that we wanted to taste all of Puglia in three days, and he was still standing after the explanation. After surveying the menu, we ordered three things that seemed utterly local, although from the description of Orecchiette la Maddonina I knew to expect something like pasta alla sorrentina, but with orecchiette. The other first course was cavatelli, fagioli e cozze, a combination of short folded pasta, beans and mussels. I had my doubts, but I was there to try. Rigatoni alla salsa di porri was the last choice. I wanted to see how it compared to my various leek pastas.
We had the good sense not to order a second course, having lunched on sandwiches of mozzarella bufala and tomatoes at around one. We ordered half a liter of a house wine, were given a choice and I think we chose the Primitivo.
While waited for our three first courses, the waiter brought us an assortment of antipasto dishes, as if we might fade away without sustenance. If we had known then what we learned Sunday, we might have ordered only the antipasto! Pugliesi have made an art form of the antipasto, and most people who are not male and in their teens can’t go on with a meal following the antipasto of the house.
The dishes arrived. They were all good, although I swear I have no reason to alter my leek pastas. Theirs was good, but I think mine are great. Pat pat. The cavatelli, fagioli e cozze, however, made a dish which should be embroidered onto the Italian flag. It was stupendous. I’ve found a recipe and I will be cooking it until I get it right and then I will tell you how to do it. It’s not only absolutely delicious, but it would be cheap to make in these days of abundant farmed mussels. We wiped that dish clean to the glaze on the china. It’s unfair, really, to the other two dishes, because in other company, you’d love those, too. Unfortunately, the Monica Belucciness of the mussel dish made the others seem a bit Goldie Hawnish.
We ordered coffee, and we were served a homemade amaro, or digestive, and it was also a star. Alison may remember better than I what was supposed to be in it. All in all, la Maddonina was a winning choice, a place I would happily go again at any time. And what did all this splendor and discovery cost? €26.50 for two. I also am showing the menu for Easter dinner, which they gave us.
The next day the rainy weather had turned to pouring and wind. We wandered around Ostuni looking for a warm bar for breakfast, preferably with a fireplace. Miles and miles we trudged, eyes open for smoke exiting a chimney. Ostunesi actually find credible the idea that you don’t need heat there. Wake up, Puglia! It’s cold in winter, even in Puglia. The first person with the vision to open a place with comfortable seating, a fireplace and good morning food will make a bundle. Most of the bars were stand- up in winter. For the average Italian who leaps from his workplace door for a fast tablespoon of coffee, he is adequately served in a bar with no seats and no heat. The old fellow who wants to read his paper and have his elevenses would go along with me and want a place to spend some warm time. We did finally find a bar with no fireplace but with tables, chairs and a big TV showing MTV. Alison took the opportunity to educate me a bit about modern pop music and the somewhat strange people who make it. Best of all, there was a food fellow as well as the bartender, and he made me a sandwich which represents an American idea of breakfast, and for Alison a series of little heated antipasto snacks.
Ostuni is built in spirals climbing to the peak of a hill, the peak being the old city, the rest not being exactly new, either. From the peak you can look out over the flat area to the sea. Like most of Puglia, the flat area is planted to olives for their famous oil. Warmed and fed, we set off to see the ancient part of town. Jonathan, the friend who lent us the house, had said his favorite restaurant was up there. And so, we went our way through the twisting streets to the top and the cathedral piazza. By the time we made it to the piazza, the wind had turned my umbrella into pickup sticks. My souvenir of Ostuni is a €3 umbrella that resembles, slightly, stained glass. I felt lucky to find it, because as we passed through town, just the week leading to the big tourist season kickoff that is Easter, everything was closed. From museums to handbag shops, chiuso. Not a sign as to when they might open, just chiuso. Jonathan’s fave restaurant was even more chiuso, because it is being renovated and is pretty much a shell of whatever it might once have been.
We’d seen signs for a restaurant that was in the guidebooks, though, so we followed them. The name is Osteria del Tempo Perso, or the Inn of the Lost Time. The pathway sketchily traced with its signs should be called the way of the lost tourist. We found it easily another time, but following the signs took us the longest way around that could be devised without actually leaving Ostuni. I tend to favor restaurants with flowers, however, and Temp Perso certainly has them. There were nice smells emitted, too. We returned there when lunchtime rolled around.
Tempo Perso is trying to be a top-flight restaurant, which would justify the prices, I guess. Have a look at the website, where they show a small list of their specialties. The menu is a bit longer than that list. The funny thing is that other than an exceptional amuse bouche, served to us as soon as we’d ordered, I remember almost nothing else but the bread. The little bowl we were served was a puree of dried favas topped with slivers of fried Italian peppers, called frigitelli. It was a mating made in heaven. I wish I’d ordered it from the menu, because everything else we ordered is just a blur—nothing special. Our main course was grilled suckling pig, and the texture struck us both as strange and a bit unpleasant. The extraordinary thing about Tempo Perso is that you have to go outside, down the stairs, a few feet up the sidewalk, up some more stairs and inside again to use the bathroom. It was also warm in the restaurant, and we were grateful for that. Another extraordinary thing is that the main course, which we shared, cost just short of what our entire meal the night before cost. €24 versus €26.50. Horse and asina (donkey girl) figured large on the menu. Our bill for two pastas, water, wine and one shared main course was €64.
I explained I would be writing a review and would like to have a menu, and the waiter handed me a folder. When we reached home I discovered that he’d given me a framable print of the front of the restaurant. No menu. Nothing outstanding. Don’t bother.
Friday night we didn’t eat.
Saturday broke clear and with a bit of sun here and there. The market, which you have already seen, was the morning goal. Then we sped off to Lecce to the south.
I will probably never be able to really explain how Lecce broke over my head. She is beautiful. I could at once picture myself living there and how the living would be. If reality is half what I imagine, it would be splendid. The university quarter is predictably grimy and tattered, like university quarters around the world tend to be, but the rest of the city ranges from Baroque to Edwardian (which in Italy is called Liberty style) and is as lovely as Caserta, but without the garbage. There were all kinds of interesting shops in the historic center, even a bike shop where Alison found the type of tire pump she’d been looking for without luck in her city that is near to Rome. I found an interesting tricycle and an electric bike which charges as you pedal and then helps you out when you flag. Is that nearly perpetual motion?
It started to rain again. BIG fat rain. We were as far as we could be from our entry to the city, searching for a little local place away from the tourist attractions. They were closed. What! Oh, there’s one named Seventh Heaven! (Settimo Cielo.) At that point even a third heaven would do. Again, it seemed like the opposite of what we sought, as it even had pictures on a posted menu, but Spring storms do tend to make one decisive.
The owner was also the waiter. He is Mr. Personality. Some of the words on the menu explained little to someone from Umbria, and I very seriously told him, “Your job is to make sure I order really typical local food without ordering horse or donkey girl.” He accepted the challenge.
The strangest word on the menu was something like “Treggheddie.” Although it is not printed on the menu of the day that he gave me, trust me when I tell you that his explanation was that it is all the various glands and intestines of a lamb, wrapped in the intestines and cooked together. We have something in Umbria that is similar but called Coradella. I skipped it.
Alison ordered from the fish menu of the day, starting with spaghetti allo scarfano and going on to roasted seppia (squid.) I left her to that on her own, since an early experience in Greece has left me incapable of confronting the many forms of octopus in the world. When asked, she said it was very good.
I ate fave e cicoria, a plate I had seen around the towns. One half was puree of favas and the other half was chicory, steamed, then chopped and sautéed with garlic and chilies. It was excellent and Alison thought so, too. I then ate “Involtini Strappalacrime” which means tearjerker rollups. I didn’t cry, but did happily reduce two rollups of a seasoned minced meat mixture within a wrapping of pancetta, baked with oil enhanced with considerable chili pepper. The house wine, of which there were several wasn’t a great Negroamaro, but got better as it went along. We decided this little restaurant was a pretty good find, and then it is always important to know where to go when the weather doesn’t suit and you are cold and wet. Mr. Personality would cheer you right up. The bill, stamped as “Asian Shop Center” for some reason, was €31 for two.
The weather got better and better through the day and we were able to drive around sightseeing through the Itria Valley with its many trulli, to Martina Franca, a lovely hilltown jammed with pretty shops and 60 centesimo internet access. We went to the oil cooperative at Ostuni and bought five-liter tins of DOC/DOP oil from the Brindisi hills. Alison found the last bottle of a riserva wine we’d had at Tempo Perso, lucky lady.
Saturday night we could only manage a little salad of the round cucumbers we’d bought at the market and some cherry tomatoes with great local oil and salt its only condiment. Lovely.
Sunday dawned bright and clear and we had a date for lunch with Jeff. In the morning we went to the ruins of a small Roman seaside city. On the way there we stopped in a little almost-closed-down beachtown with a big bakery and bought taralli. One day I plan to eat them, too. What you might think of it depends on how many ruins you’ve seen and how much you like ruins. Trust me, if that archaeological site were anywhere but Italy, thousands would pour into it daily. The Roman site is called Egnazia and the beachtown is Savellatri. The sad thing is that Italy is so spoiled for ruins and cute beachtowns that these two are just two more. If you are in the neighborhood, drop by and give the lonely museum girl a thrill.
After our nod to culture, we blazed up the road to Carovigno, to seek out the restaurant recommended by the farmer we talked to at the market. “Fantasy,” he’d said, “just like a housewife cooks.” We went all the way up Carovigno’s hill and saw nothing. We asked. The man I asked said, “But who is the owner?” Boh! Finally we were told to go partway down the hill and we’d find it. I phoned Jeff and he saw me where I was turning and promised to follow. It was Alison who found it. “Fantasy da Betteghino” explained why the man wanted to know the name of the owner. I guess if you are local, you know who owns what, and not necessarily what he calls it. Finally together, we were given the only available table. The entire restaurant was booked for after church Sunday dinner.
Fantasy is not a looker. It’s nothing special inside, either. But what food. The instant we saw that the insiders were all ordering the antipasto, we ordered it too. I couldn’t make an accurate count, but it was about 20 separate plates. We turned down the tripe and we didn’t eat the surimi. The rest was wonderful. It was so cheap that I felt guilty not ordering anything else, so I ordered grilled shrimp, Alison ordered orecchiette con rape (little ears with cooked turnip greens) and Jeff ate some pasta with a red sauce. Forgive me, it was just too much variety and too many ideas and too many flavors. We loved it. I would not only go there again, I’d walk there. From here. For all of this, wine and water, too, we paid €45 for three. We crawled away and there were people waiting for our table and we left all those Italians who ate that antipasto still eating even on to dessert. How? I have not a clue.
These photos show some of what we were given. I will try to name what I can, but it’s really hard. For me the most memorable thing was the burrata—the Puglian way with mozzarella stuffed with butter and cream. Is it worth the chance of a heart attack later? You bet.
Jeff drove us to the port area of Brindisi, where he lives and fed us ice cream and that was darned good, too. Alison did trill the praises of the cannolo flavor, rich with ricotta, and she doesn’t often get heated up over food.
Sunday night Armando was finally free of all competing women and took us for pizza in a cavern. It was good, the wine was nice, the little meatballs beforehand kept us from gnawing on our knuckles—that is meant to be irony, because at that point of the weekend we had started to think of meals as punishment rather than pleasure. The trunk of the car was stuffed with take home specialties of the area. We had an idea to stop for lunch in Abruzzo the next day. A girl needs a plan, you know.
Osteria la Maddonina di Nicoletti
Vico A. Fratti, 8
72017 Ostuni (BR)
(340)787-9707
no closure information, open lunch and dinner
Osteria del Tempo Perso
Via G. Tanzarella Vitale, 47
Ostuni
(0831)303320
www.osteriadeltempoperso.com
no closure information
Settimo Cielo
Via Principe di Savoia, 35
Lecce
(0832)308220
closed Sunday and Monday evenings
Fantasy da Antonella (the sign says differently)
Via Giosuè, 25
Carovigno (BR)
(0831)991017
closed Monday
By the end of the trip I felt like this.
April 10th, 2007
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