Flavors of Puglia: Traditional Recipes from the Heel of Italy's Boot - Rilegato

Puglia, or Apulia as it is often called in English, is "the heel" of the Italian boot, including the steep and rocky spur of the Gargano peninsula projecting into the sea.  It is the easternmost region of Italy, eight hundred kilometers of coastline stretching down the Adriatic and around the heel into the high arch of the Ionian Sea and the Gulf of Taranto.  This heel reaches out toward the Eastern Mediterranean, and at times the landscape looks and feels more like Greece than the softer, gentler Italy of Rome and the North.  Especially under the harsh brilliance of the summer sun--il solleone, the lion sun of August--you sense the connection with the Balkans and the East.  Greeks were among the earliest settlers in this region, dominating the indigenous Messapicans, the Daunians, the Peucetians, as far back as Mycenaean times, perhaps even earlier.  Taranto on the Ionian was a Greek colony from the eighth century B.C., a flourishing capital of Magna Graecia, the great cosmopolitan Greek world beyond Greece itself; in Taranto's Museo Nazionale, you catch glimpses of the splendors of that lost world in the dazzling collection of antique vases illustrating in exquisitely painted detail the old stories of gods, heroes, and mortals, their lives so intimately entwined.

For all the richness of its history, Puglia is, has always been, a land of poverty, a land of emigration.  Thousands of Pugliese left their villages for America in the early years of this century, many of them never to return.  Almost everyone you meet in Puglia has cousins in America, and if you say you're from there, most people have a tale to tell.

"The California of Italy" is the phrase that chambers of commerce and tourist development agencies use to lure tourists to Puglia, but Puglia has something California lacks--a depth of history, a sense of the chiaroscuro of tragedy and loss, of the harsh side of life that counterpoints moments of joy and sweetness.  There's a special poignancy to celebration when the ache of misfortune and sorrow underlies it: It seems significant that the pizzica, a woman's triumphal dance of seduction and conquest, is almost indistinguishable from the ritualistic rapture of the tarantella, the hypnotic trance-dance induced by the remorseless sting of a spider that lurks, one writer says, "in the labyrinths of a guilty conscience" and almost always attacks women, almost always those who have been unlucky in love or marriage.

"La cucina pugliese nasce come cucina povera," says Paola Pettini who for twenty-five years has directed a cooking school in her native Bari: The cuisine of Puglia was born as the cuisine of poverty.  What this means, she explains, is pasta made without eggs, bread made from the hard-grain durum wheat flour that flourishes locally, and a diet based on vegetables, including many wild vegetables like cicorielle, wild chicory, and lampascione, the bulb of a wild tassel hyacinth, foods that are foraged from stony fields and abandoned terraces.  Meat is not much eaten and beef, until a few years ago, was almost unknown on Pugliese tables, with horsemeat being preferred.  For Christmas and Easter feasting, weddings and baptisms, Pugliese cooks look to what are called animale da cortile, farmyard animals, especially chickens and rabbits, although this rocky landscape being sheep country, lamb is the very symbol of feasting, as it is in most of the Mediterranean.

The food of Puglia is in essence a home-based cuisine, not marked by the influence of great chefs or restaurants.  Pasta manufacturer Benedetto Cavalieri says that even twenty years ago, in his home town of Lecce, there were only a handful of restaurants, mostly patronized by commercial travelers and others who had no home to go to--or, Benedetto adds with a discreet smile, were dining with ladies they could not bring home.  Restaurants like Concetta Cantoro's home-style Cucina Casareccia are newcomers to Lecce, even more so because of the chef-owner's rigorous insistence on serving that very home-based cuisine that is the glory of Pugliese kitchens.

Because it is based on home cooking, this is a cucina delle donne, created by women cooking at home rather than male chefs in professional kitchens.  It is a cuisine without rules and regulations, based solely on what's in the family larder, which is then stretched and expanded to feed those who may show up al improviso, at the unplanned last minute.  Thus, a recipe becomes a manner of speaking rather than a rule.  "How much flour do I need for orecchiette for six people?" asks Adriana Bozzi-Colonna in a kitchen in Lecce.  And her assistant Silvana Camisa replies with a gesture: Using her hands as a cup she scoops up a double handful of semola.  "That's for one," she says, and proceeds to add five more scoops to the pile.

Pugliese cuisine is based on olive oil, one of the great products of the region.  In any given year, Puglia produces as much as two-thirds of all the olive oil in Italy, and while much of it is shipped north, more of it stays right here to be used in Pugliese kitchens.  Cooks in Puglia even deep-fry with extra virgin oil, something that comes as a surprise to Americans but is routine in many parts of the Mediterranean (Sicily, Andalucia in southern Spain).

Butter is rarely used in the traditional cuisine, and even some sweets are made with olive oil and often fried.  And sweets, moreover, are not an everyday occurrence but associated only with holidays, whether major ones like Christmas and Easter, or minor ones like the Feast of the Dead (All Saints) or Shrove Tuesday, or locally celebrated ones like the feasts of St.  Anthony Abbot and St. Joseph.

In this culture of sparsity, nothing is wasted.  Stale bread is cut into cubes or crumbled and toasted in oil to make a garnish for pasta and vegetable dishes.  Vegetables themselves, at the height of their season, are dried, pickled, or preserved in oil to eke out the larder in the lean months of the year.  Figs are dried or boiled down to make a syrup, and grape juice, after the first pressing, is boiled to make a thick molasses called mosto cotto, to be served at Christmas poured over the fried sweets called cartellate.

Wild greens in great variety are still harvested, especially during the brief Pugliese winter when gardens are less productive and the wildings are at their best, tender and sweet.  On misty days, when the damp soil yields wild roots more easily, you'll see elderly foragers, men and women alike, stoop-shouldered as they course intently over abandoned fields, often accompanied by grandchildren who are learning to tell good from bad.  Lampascioni are so precious that in recent years, it's rumored, they've been brought in from North Africa to fill Pugliese market demand.  Even the green shoots of the vine, pruned in the springtime in order to concentrate the plant's energy on the developing fruit, are soaked for a few days in vinegar and water, then heated with oil and garlic, mixed with the ever-present purée of fava beans, and served with crusts of fried bread.
Spaghetti with oven-roasted tomatoes
Pasta con pomodori al forno
6 servings

This recipe comes from my landlord and friend Pino Marchese.  He makes this in the summertime when Puglia's pride, big plump Sammarzano plum tomatoes, weighing nearly a pound each, are at their peak.  Whatever tomatoes you use, make sure they are absolutely ripe, juicy, and full of flavor--this is one recipe where canned tomatoes simply won't work.  Pino uses spaghetti, but linguine, vermicelli, or bucatini will do as well.

8 large very ripe tomatoes
Coarse sea salt to taste
4 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
l/2 cup minced flat-leaf parsley
l/2 cup freshly grated bread crumbs
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 pound thin spaghetti or linguine
Freshly ground black pepper
l/2 cup shredded basil leaves
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or pecorino, optional

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
Slice each tomato in half and set, cut side up, in a lightly oiled oven dish that will hold all the tomatoes in one layer.  Sprinkle the halves with salt, garlic, and parsley.

Toast the bread crumbs in a frying pan over medium heat until they are light golden-brown.  Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the tomato halves and drizzle all the olive oil over them.  Place the dish in the preheated oven and roast for 30 to 45 minutes, or until they are very soft and juicy.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil, timing it so the pasta will finish when the tomatoes are ready.  Add the pasta and cook, partially covered, until the pasta is done, about 10 minutes depending on its size and shape.  Drain the pasta well and turn it into a heated bowl.  Scrape in the cooled tomatoes fresh from the oven, together with any juices.  Mix furiously, taste, and add more salt if necessary, an abundance of ground black pepper, the basil, and, for those who wish, a handful of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or pecorino.
Herb-marinated fillets of fish
Pesce alle erbe marinate
2 to 3 servings

A quick and simple but effective technique, this can be expanded almost infinitely and adapted to almost any kind of fish.  Moreover, you can vary the seasonings, using, for instance, more or less garlic, or other types of herbs--basil, thyme, even un-Pugliese herbs like lovage or tarragon.  I call for haddock, but the recipe can serve for almost any kind of white-fleshed fish--monkfish, weakfish, Pacific cod, mahimahi, or others.

Book by Nancy Harmon Jenkins