Southern Comforts

Forget Michelin stars, Italy`s Puglia region offers peasant food that's out of this world

I fell in love in Puglia. Not with a man, you understand, but with a cheese. Burrata is worth the trip alone, and I scoffed it at every opportunity – I even watched it being made (think richer, creamier mozzarella), such was my obsession. In fact, Puglia was a revelation all round, and spring is the perfect time to visit.

Never have I eaten so well in Italy. But I’m not talking about luxurious white truffles here (which, I admit, are also to die for), but humble vegetables. We had meat and fish, sure – but the vegetable cooking in Puglia was something else. Big earthenware bowls of fava bean purée, eaten with steamed wild chicory and drizzled with the region’s plentiful and fruity extra virgin olive oil. Orecchiette pasta (“little ears”) with a punchy sauce of turnip tops, garlic, anchovies and hot peperoncini; and countless vegetable stews, such as peas, black cabbage and cubed toasted bread. Posh it wasn’t – but then I’ve always thought Italian food is at its best when rustic.

Sometimes Puglia didn’t even feel like Italy to me. Apulia, as it is often called in English, is the heel of the Italian boot and reaches down to the dramatic, rocky spur of the Gargano peninsula. It is the easternmost region of Italy, with 800km of coastline stretching down the Adriatic and around to the Ionian Sea and the Gulf of Taranto.

At times the landscape looks more like Greece – check out Ostuni from a distance, especially when the sun beats down in the summer, bouncing off whitewashed walls and terracotta roofs. In fact, the Greeks were among the earliest settlers here.

Puglia has known many conquerors, including the Romans, French, Spanish and Turks – all making regular sorties along the coast and leaving their mark. The architecture is as rich as the cuisine – from the cute, hobbit- like trulli (stone dwellings capped by corbel- vaulted stone roofs), to the baroque fantasies of Lecce and Martina Franca.

But for all the richness of its history, Puglia has always been a land of poverty, a land of emigration. Thousands left to make a new life in the US in the early 1900s, many never to return. Out of this poverty grew a style of cooking, known as “cucina povera”.

It is pasta made without eggs, bread from hard-grain, locally grown durum wheat flour, and a diet based mainly on vegetables – many of them wild. You may like to try that chicory with the fava beans, or perhaps lampascione – a kind of onion, actually the bulb of wild tassel hyacinth, foraged from stony fields and crumbling terraces, then pickled in oil or brine.

Women rule the Puglian kitchen, or “cucina delle donne”, unlike the regimented male- dominated kitchen elsewhere in Italy and Europe. The menu is based solely on what’s in the larder and what’s good at the market that day – recipes change from one village to the next, one household or restaurant to the other.

Nowhere was this more evident than at Cucina Casareccia (19 Via Costadura, tel: +39 0832 245178) in Lecce, known locally as “Le Zie” (“The Aunts”). Concetta Cantoro and her sisters rule the roost in their tiny kitchen, serving up glorious cucina povera in what looks like their front room. Old photos and bright canvases painted by local artists jostle for space on the uneven walls; plastic flowers sit on each paper-cloth covered table.

Concetta brought us pittule – light, savoury fritters made with capers and chopped black olives. Then plates of ciceri e tria – homemade pasta fried in extra virgin olive oil with soft, flavour-packed chickpeas. We also couldn’t resist (although we actually had no choice – the menu is small) her veal meatballs stuffed with local cheese and braised in white wine. We washed the lot down with a jug of local, fruity Salento Primitivo, discovering that Puglia’s wine scene is equally exciting.

Old wineries here have stepped up their game, and the new generation are making a name for themselves with the fascinating line- up of grape varieties. There’s not much in the way of wine tourism yet – you have to make an appointment before visiting most of the vineyards – but it will happen, be sure of that.

For now, content yourselves with sampling as much as you can – even continuing the experiment back home, where British, French and German wine merchants are snapping up Puglia’s vibrant wines as fast as you can say “Negroamaro”. And don’t dismiss the house wines offered either, most of the ones we tried were more than just drinkable.

Puglia’s other great export is its olive oil. The region produces 48% of all Italy’s extra virgin olive oil – hence their liberal deep-frying with it. There are, it is said, 50 million olive trees in Puglia, and they dominate the landscape.

Walled orchards of olives stretch as far as the eye can see, containing tree trunks so thick it would take four people with arms outstretched to circle them. Add to this almond trees with delicate pink blossoms that drift across stony fields, and towering blue-green and silver cypresses that line the old Roman roads and you’ve got a picturesque snapshot of Puglia.

One sight that grabbed me were the scarlet festoons of baby tomatoes, strung up to dry in cellars over the winter months. I never did discover what variety they were, but they had an intense flavour, like a regular sun-dried tomato, yet they stayed juicy until the spring.

I ate them served in various dishes, but they worked best eaten with the raw, creamy, sweet, red prawns from Gallipoli at Masseria Torre Coccaro, near Fasano. Owner Vittorio Muolo converted this abandoned 16th-century masseria (fortified farmhouse) a few years back and set about creating something new for Puglia: smart rooms, but with a sense of place. He also brought in an excellent chef, who plunders the masseria’s restored 2.5ha kitchen garden for the majority of the menu. Today, around Puglia there are lots of masserie to choose from.

Vittorio is on first-name terms with the region’s cheese, olive oil and wine producers (he scored me that visit to the burrata producer), and he buys the fish from the market for the hotel every day, getting up early to bag the best.

They eat a lot of raw fish in Puglia. At Osteria Perricci (1 Via Orazio Comes, tel: +39 080 937 2208) in the seaside town of Monopoli I tucked into raw squid and cuttlefish, plucked from the sea that morning and served simply with a squeeze of lemon – followed by an assortment of more sparklingly fresh seafood.

But, judging by the orders flying out of the kitchen, the most popular dish was the cavatelli con cozze – pasta with mussels served in their shells and an aromatic fish broth, garnished with a few peppery rocket leaves. To finish, a digestif: homemade bay leaf liqueur, served in an old grappa bottle by the patron, who was sporting a thick wig worn at a jaunty angle.

Puglia is packed with places like this. I’ll never forget my simple lunch of vegetable soup mopped up with crusty cornbread at Taverna del Duca (3 Via Papatotero, tel: +39 080 431 3007) in Locorotondo. Antonella Scatigna is maître d’, waiter and chef all rolled into one, running out of her kitchen each time the door opens to seat her next customer at one of six small tables.

I’ll also never forget the broccoli-dressed pasta at Osteria del Tempo Perso in Ostuni (47 Via G. Tanzarella Vitale, tel: +39 083 130 4819), famed for its 15-dish antipasti. Navigate the maze of narrow, white streets, heading down a series of centuries-worn steps and you’ll eventually come across it, cut into the hillside.

The meal started with a delicate courgette- and-cheese custard served on a fine chickpea purée, followed by artichokes stuffed with ricotta, and strascinati (bigger orecchiette) with a sublime sauce of sprouting broccoli, chillies and anchovy fillets dressed not with grated Parmesan, but with crunchy olive oil-fried breadcrumbs. And more burrata – this time scattered with pomegranate seeds.

Ah, burrata – the love of my life. It’s virtually impossible to find back home in the UK, except at posh Italian restaurants that charge through the nose for it. It has a short shelf life and is therefore best eaten within 24 hours, and considered past it after 48 hours.

In Italian, burrata means “buttered”. I watched the still-hot cheese being filled with more mozzarella and fresh cream before being sealed up – it oozes seductively when you first cut into it. No wonder it melted my heart. I’ll just have to fly back to get my fix.

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