If ever there were a food photo worthy of being called “porn” on my blog, it would surely be this one: this fava bean purée and toasted bread round pie topped with a delicately battered and fried red onion round and accompanied by a lightly roasted shishito pepper (for lunch at the Masseria Le Fabriche yesterday on the western coast of Apulia). Sexy and delicious…
When time permits, I’ll devote a post to frise (FREE-zeh) and friselle (free-ZEHL-leh) — a type of crunchy bread, sometimes soaked in water, dressed with various toppings.
That’s one of the Pichierri granddaughters at Vinicola Savese (incredible visit, btw). She’s a heartbreaker!
There’s no denying it: so far, the Radici Wines gathering has been one of the best tasting festivals I’ve ever attended in Italy. In past years (now its fourth), the festival was limited to Apulian and Lucanian producers. But this year it includes more than 100 producers from Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, and Campania.
And even though the unusual “speed-dating” format can lead to some awkward silences, it’s been fantastic to taste and chat one-on-one with so many interesting producers.
There’s no time this morning to begin posting on the many amazing wines (1997 Gaglioppo, anyone? 1975 Primitivo?). But I’ll get to them soon enough.
In the meantime, fiordilatte — literally, crème de la crème, one of the many wonderful “plastic” cheeses produced here in Apulia — and crusty bread were just what I needed for lunch…
But the dish that really blew me away at last night’s dinner at Le Fabriche was this housemade almond paste pastry, a classic of Apulian gastronomy. The combination of nuanced texture and gentle sweetness was sublime.
The pastry paired stunningly well with Le Fabriche’s Primitivo di Manduria Dolce Naturale, which surprised me with its balanced alcohol and gorgeous fruit (and it thrilled the crowd of top-flight wine writers).
The first tastings of the festival begin this morning and then we head out for a winery visit at Pichierri this afternoon (SUPER psyched for that, one of my favorite Apulian producers)… Stay tuned!
That’s the charismatic Alessia Perrucci (left), our host and owner of the agriturismo Masseria Le Fabriche, with Franco Ziliani (center), who’s one of the Radici Wines festival’s curators, and Nicola Campanile (right), festival organizer.
The food at last night’s welcome dinner was wonderful. I LOVED the handmade orecchiette (one of Puglia’s classic pastas) with veal meatballs and pecorino. The chef’s marretto — a loaf made of lamb offal — was also exceedingly delicious…
I joined Paolo and his crew last night for dinner at the famous and homey Lecce restaurant Le Zie, where owner Carmela Perrone insisted on showing me how to dress my fave e cicorie (puréed favas and sautéed chicory) and fed me my first bite, telling me to make a wish (I’ll tell you if it comes true this Christmas).
However simple, her rendering of this dish was no less than a masterpiece.
La tiella (taieddhra in Leccese), named after the teglia or earthenware pot it’s cooked in — baked mussels, potatoes, and zucchine. Unbelievably delicious… Life-changing, really.
We had sat down for dinner at around 10 p.m. and by the time we arrived at the second course, there were no more of the white-wine braised meatballs. And so Carmela breaded and fried some of the meatballs reserved for the next day. This was perhaps the mother of all meatballs…
I don’t have time to post properly on the amazing meal we had there but I will in upcoming weeks… Today, I’m headed over to Manduria on the west coast of Apulia for the preview tastings for the Radici Wines festival… Stay tuned and thanks for reading!
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.
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!
Natural winemaker Trinchero (Asti, Piedmont) has always been one of my favorite producers of Barbera. The 1996 Barbera d’Asti [single-vineyard] Vigna del Noce ranks up there with the greatest bottlings of Barbera I have ever tasted.
And so when I spied a bottle of the 2003 Vigna del Noce at the Houston Wine Merchant, I couldn’t resist picking it up — despite the fact that 2003 was a notoriously difficult vintage because of the extremely hot summer.
Tracie P and I finally opened it over the Memorial Day holiday and paired with some griddle-fired beef sirloin burgers.
The wine — vinified with native yeast and raised in traditional large casks — was hot in the glass, with a lot of alcohol for this house (due, undoubtedly, to the nature of the vintage). But it still had that bright, bright acidity that you find in old-school Barbera. The black fruit and berry flavors were chewy and rich and once the alcohol blew off, I thoroughly enjoyed the wine with my burger.
The wine wasn’t perfect: I found the alcohol out of balance with the fruit and acidity. And it probably should have been opened a few years ago.
But as we Piedmontophiles drink the last of the 03s lying around, I couldn’t help but admire this wine for being true to its place and its vintage.
Sometimes a wine is great… for not being so great…
Pappa col Pomodoro on a summer eve with a glass of slightly tired and utterly delicious 2007 Bucci Verdicchio was just right.
I carefully washed and finely chopped the stalks of two leeks. And then I sautéed them in San Giuliano extra-virgin olive oil from Alghero (my favorite commercial olive oil) with two cloves garlic, peeled and minced.
And then added one jar of puréed tomato (making sure that the only ingredients were salt and tomato), seasoned with salt, pepper, and chili flakes, and then added a generous amount of freshly torn basil.
“Texas basil.” (Yes, I know, everything is bigger in Texas.)
Then I added stock and cooked the soup for about thirty minutes over medium heat and removed.
Then I added the 4-day-old stale bread. It’s important to let the bread soak in the soup for at least 30 minutes. I used a immersion blender to purée the bread after it had sopped up all the soup (in the olden days, I used to use a vegetable mill but, I gotta say, the immersion blender was awesome).
I served the Pappa room temperature, drizzled with olive oil and garnished with a basil leaf.
That’s how we make Pappa col Pomodoro at our house. :-)
Do Bianchi 