Puglia on a Plate: Orecchiette, Lampascioni, Taralli, Burrata and the Heel of Italy's Cooking of Almost Nothing
Puglia is the heel of the Italian boot, a long flat region of limestone and red earth between two seas, and for most of its history it fed the rest of Italy while eating very little of the best of it. The durum wheat that became the nation's pasta grew here; the olive trees, some of them a thousand years old, produced a large share of the country's oil; the meat and the cream went north. What stayed was the cooking that a poor, fertile, sun-struck place makes from wheat, oil, wild plants and the sea, and it turns out to be some of the best food in Italy. This is the region behind the Puglian producers on our shelf, dish by dish.
The wheat
Puglia's plain, the Tavoliere, is the largest in southern Italy and has grown hard durum wheat since the Romans. Durum makes the semolina that makes dried pasta and the region's bread, and the two most Puglian foods on earth are both semolina and water. Orecchiette, "little ears," are shaped at the kitchen table by dragging a knife across a small piece of dough and flipping the cup over the thumb, and in the old quarter of Bari women still make them on boards outside their front doors and sell them to whoever walks by. The dish is orecchiette with cime di rapa, and it has its own recipe here. Taralli, the ring-shaped crackers of the region, are made with flour, olive oil and white wine, boiled briefly like bagels and then baked until they shatter; they are eaten with a glass of wine before dinner and, in I Contadini's tarallini, are on our cracker shelf. The bread of Altamura, a huge dark-crusted durum loaf, is the only bread in Italy with a DOP.
The oil
Puglia produces more olive oil than any other Italian region, from trees so old that the region has laws protecting the monumental ones. The oil is robust, green and peppery from the Coratina olive, and it is used the way the north uses butter, in everything and in quantity. It is also the reason the region's vegetables taste the way they do; a dish of wild greens boiled and dressed with Puglian oil and salt is a complete course. Our olive oil guide has the Puglian bottles; Fratepietro's giant Cerignola olives, from the plain's olive capital, are the table olive the oil comes with.
The wild things
Cucina povera, the cooking of the poor, meant foraging, and Puglia's fields and roadsides supplied it. Lampascioni are the bulbs of a wild hyacinth, dug in winter, bitter as a cure, and tamed by boiling and preserving in oil or vinegar; our guide to lampascioni explains the bulb and puntarelle covers another bitter green the region loves. Wild chicory, fennel, asparagus, rocket, and the turnip tops that go with orecchiette are all gathered rather than grown. The bitterness is not an accident; it is the palate of the whole region, balanced by oil and salt and, in the case of the classic fave e cicoria, by a purée of dried fava beans smoothed with oil, which is the dish Puglians name first when asked what their grandmothers cooked. I Contadini's Leccine olives and the rest of the producer's jars are that pantry, preserved.
The sea
Puglia has more coastline than any mainland region, and it eats its seafood raw more than anywhere else in Italy. On the harbor wall in Bari, sea urchins are split and eaten with bread; raw octopus is beaten on the rocks to tenderize it; tiny raw shrimp and mussels are served with a squeeze of lemon and nothing else. Cooked, the region does mussels stuffed with breadcrumbs, tiella, a baked layering of rice, potatoes and mussels from Bari, and fish stews on the Gargano. A tin of good mussels from our tinned fish shelf, opened with bread and lemon, is the closest a Denver table gets.
The cheese
Burrata was invented in Andria, in the north of the region, around 1900, reportedly as a way to use up scraps of mozzarella: a pouch of stretched curd filled with cream and shreds of the same curd, tied at the top, and eaten within a day or two. It is Puglia's one luxury export and it tastes best in the region, where it is served torn open on a plate with nothing but oil, salt and bread. Caciocavallo, the aged pear-shaped cow's cheese hung in pairs, and ricotta forte, a fermented ricotta of alarming strength, are the working cheeses. A burrata from a good cheesemonger, a Puglian oil, a few Cerignolas and a stack of tarallini is a Puglian lunch anywhere in the world.
The colored pasta of Marella
A Puglian family workshop, Marella, makes the hand-shaped, naturally colored pasta we carry: multicolor orecchiette, spinach-green olive leaves, and the torn straccetti. They are the region's kitchen-table shapes made for the table to look at, and our pasta shapes guide puts them to work.
The Puglian table at home
Tarallini and a glass of something cold to begin. A dish of lampascioni and a dish of Cerignolas. Orecchiette with broccoli rabe, or the olive-leaf pasta with oil, cherry tomatoes and ricotta salata. A burrata torn open with oil and salt. Bread, and more oil. A square of dark chocolate and an espresso to finish, because Puglia is not a dessert region and does not apologize. The pasta, taralli, olives, lampascioni and oil are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. The burrata is the errand, and the sun is not included.
