The positive response to the Italian Grape Name and Appellation Pronunciation Project has been wonderful… Yesterday, S. Irene Virbila gave the project a shout-out in the LA Times… Check it out here…
Thanks so much to everyone for speaking Italian grapes! :-)
Paolo and I sat down for dinner at about 9 p.m. last night at La Quinta Stagione in downtown Lecce where this fantastic, creative take on the classic ciceri e tria (chickpeas and long noodles) reminded me of what Tony always says: “For Italian food to be authentic, it must be a balance of the classic and the creative.”
The photos simply do not do justice to Chef Franco Tornese’s deft hand.
That’s the amazing chef Franco (standing) with Cataldo Ferrari, vineyard manager at Paolo’s family’s winery Cantele.
Folks in Lecce don’t sit down for dinner until about 9 p.m. and so Paolo and I popped into one of his favorite downtown bars and had a little merendina.
The rustico (above) is a savory pastry dough stuffed with — get this — mozzarella, béchamel, and cherry tomatoes… Unbelievable…
Rustico, where have you been all my life???!!!
Yesterday afternoon Paolo and I returned to the scene of my puccia crime to snap this photo of the crazy varieties of toppings you can use. I don’t think I can’t eat enough pucce!
Landed safely in Bari today from Munich together with the German women’s national basketball team (I was one of the shortest people on the plane). Paolo generously came to pick me up and we headed down to downtown Lecce where we stopped for a puccia, the classic and ubiquitous stuffed flatbread of Puglia, one of its “fast foods.”
I wasn’t as ambitious as Paolo in the stuffings I selected (prosciutto, cheese, mushrooms, and arugula). He had his with tuna, prosciutto (yes, tuna and prosciutto!), and insalata russa (vegetable and mayonnaise salad). When I asked him about the unusual combination of salt-cured pork and olive oil-cured tuna, he said, “that’s the whole point of the puccia! You have to mix everything in the puccia!”
The quality of the bread here — even at an urban “fast food” joint like this one — just blows me away.
I wish I had been more ambitious in my fillings… but I know this first puccia won’t be my last!
Do Bianchi by Jeremy Parzen 