A whitewashed stone table in a Puglian courtyard with a tray of freshly shaped orecchiette, a bowl of taralli, a dish of lampascioni in oil, a burrata torn open, green Cerignola olives, a bottle of olive oil and an olive branch

Puglia on a Plate

Published 9 Sep 20266 min read

Filed under Pickled / Brined / Oil Soaked Goods Fratepietro I Contadini Marella Puglia

Puglia, in Italy's south, has more land under olive trees than any other Italian region. Its cooking is built from what that land and its coast provide: wheat, oil, wild plants, fish and fresh cheese. Orecchiette with turnip tops and fava beans with chicory, two everyday dishes, both appear on Italy's official list of the region's traditional foods. This is the region behind I Contadini, Fratepietro and Marella, dish by dish.

The wheat

Wheat dough comes first. Orecchiette, "little ears," are dragged one at a time across a wooden board with the thumb or a small knife, then pressed into a small dome. In Bari's old quarter, on Strada Arco Basso, women make them on the doorsteps of their homes and sell them to passersby. Orecchiette with turnip tops is on the national list of Puglia's traditional dishes, and the orecchiette with broccoli rabe recipe is a version to cook at home. Pastificio Marella, a family pasta maker in the province of Bari, makes colored versions of the region's shapes: multicolor orecchiette (shop Marella Multicolor Orecchiette) and green olive leaves (shop Marella Foglie d'Ulivo). The pasta shapes guide matches shapes like these to their sauces.

Taralli, the crackers of Puglia, are rings of unleavened dough made from flour, olive oil and white wine, boiled and then baked. As with a bagel, the boil sets the surface before the oven dries it, which helps give a tarallo its crisp shell. I Contadini makes them small as tarallini (shop I Contadini Classic Tarallini), and the crackers complete guide sets them beside the other crackers of the Mediterranean and beyond. The bread of Altamura received a DOP in 2003.

The oil

Puglia has some 60 million olive trees, and about a third of Italy's olive-growing land is in the region. Its oldest trees are protected by a 2007 regional law on the landscape of Puglia's monumental olive trees. Coratina, grown on some 70,000 hectares of Puglia, is known for robust, green, peppery oil, and in Puglia oil does the work butter does in the north. The olive oil buying guide explains the Coratina style and what to pair it with. The Bella di Cerignola table olive is native to the countryside around Cerignola, in the Tavoliere. Fratepietro's Bella di Cerignola olives (shop Fratepietro Bella di Cerignola olives) are that variety.

The wild things

Cucina povera, the cooking of the poor, drew on the fields as well as the garden, and Italy's list of Puglia's traditional foods includes wild chicory, wild asparagus and wild chard. Lampascioni are the bulbs of the tassel hyacinth, Muscari comosum, harvested in Puglia from about December to April. Bitterness is their defining flavor, and in Puglia they are blanched and put up in jars under olive oil. The lampascioni guide explains the bulb, and the puntarelle guide covers a bitter chicory that Puglia also grows.

Bitterness runs through the region's cooking, balanced by oil and salt and, in the case of fave e cicorie, by white fava beans, a pairing on the same official list. I Contadini, a preserves producer in Ugento, puts that pantry in jars: capers, artichokes, giardiniera and olives, among them Leccine olives (shop I Contadini Leccine olives).

The sea

In Bari, raw seafood is eaten standing at the harbor. At the Molo San Nicola, the small harbor locals call 'Nderr a la lanze, fishermen open sea urchins for a crowd of regulars, who drag bread through the roe. The fishermen slam octopus against the rocks until it curls. Raw curled octopus, polpo crudo arricciato, is on the official list of Puglia's traditional foods, and lemon is squeezed over everything. Cooked, the region bakes potatoes, rice and mussels together in one pan, another listed dish. A tin of mussels opened with bread and lemon is the Denver version, and the tinned fish complete guide covers how to serve one.

The cheese

Burrata comes from Andria, where it was reportedly first made in the twentieth century to use up scraps of mozzarella: a pouch of stretched curd filled with cream and shreds of the same curd, eaten fresh. The story told in Andria credits a cheesemaker, Lorenzo Bianchino, working on a farm cut off by a heavy snowfall, and one of the first written mentions of the cheese appears in a 1931 Touring Club guide. Burrata di Andria is now an EU protected geographical indication. Caciocavallo and ricotta forte sit beside burrata on Italy's list of Puglia's traditional cheeses.

Puglia by element: what Italy lists

Italy keeps a national list of traditional food products, the PAT, and Puglia's section runs to more than three hundred entries. Sorted by the five elements of this piece, and set beside the region's EU designations, the dishes above line up like this.

Element	Official listing	Where it appears above
Wheat	PAT: Orecchiette; Orecchiette con le cime di rapa; Taralli. EU: Pane di Altamura DOP (2003)	Orecchiette from Bari's doorsteps, taralli, Altamura bread
Oil	EU: five DOP oils (Collina di Brindisi, Dauno, Terra di Bari, Terra d'Otranto, Terre Tarentine); La Bella della Daunia DOP table olives (2000)	Coratina oil, Bella di Cerignola olives
Wild plants	PAT: Cicorie selvatiche; Asparagi selvatici; Lampascioni sott'olio; Fave bianche e cicorie ('Ncapriata)	Wild greens, lampascioni, fave e cicorie
Sea	PAT: Polpo crudo arricciato; Teglia al forno con patate riso e cozze	Raw octopus at the Bari harbor, the baked mussel dish
Cheese	PAT: Burrata; Caciocavallo; Ricotta forte. EU: Burrata di Andria IGP	Burrata, caciocavallo, ricotta forte

Read this way, the wild-plant row holds the most everyday food: greens and bulbs gathered from the fields, and the beans they are paired with, kept on the official record alongside the region's famous cheese.

The Puglian table at home

Tarallini and a glass of something cold to begin, with a dish of lampascioni and a dish of Cerignolas beside them. Then 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. An espresso to finish. The shop is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and products ship across the continental U.S. from theambrosianpantry.com.