Cooking classes and vacations in Puglia Italy

It’s the 10th August (and by the way, it’s my birthday!) and in Puglia we are enjoying a wonderful summer. The weather is just perfect, sunny but not too hot. Our white sandy beaches are more and more popular. And Puglia has become one of the trendiest and top destinations in Italy for food and wine lovers.
If you are planning to visit Puglia and you just found our blog, you may find interesting reading some of our favorite posts:

About Puglia

• aperitif time: raw sea urchins!
• millenary olive trees in Puglia
• how to order a meal in Puglia
• delicious figs from Puglia
• fresh burrata
• where to have the best seafood in Puglia
• best ice cream to have in Puglia if you want to be local: the spumone
• Altamura durum wheat bread
• food fairs in Puglia: delicious meat
• the taranta festival in Puglia
• trulli houses in Alberobello and Valle Itria
• best places to see in Puglia
• hiking in Porto Selvaggio

About Lecce

• Living the dolce vita in Lecce: what you should not miss in Lecce!
• frisella bread
• The Pasticciotto Leccese
• hand made mozzarella
• best espresso to have in Lecce

About Puglia food

• healthy and simple recipe with farro (emmer) and black mussels: a good carb to keep women healthy
• Italian Easter bread and focaccia
• traditional orecchiette fresh pasta with broccoli rabe: traditional recipes from Puglia
• red shrimps in sea salt crust: SO GOOD!
• durum wheat tagliatelle with mussels
• risotto with artichokes: simple and healthy recipe
• Lentils with orzo (barley)
• Ciceri and tria: tagliatelle with chick peas
• fava broad beans
• very healthy strawberry salad
• Christmas food traditions

About Marika and our family’s recipes

• making orecchiette pasta with our Mom and Grandmother
• Marika’s famous pear jam
• the secret Italian ingredient: Marika’s famous capers
• Marika’s famous lemon granita: so good that it deserved a whole review on Tripadvisor!
• Home made tomato sauce: our family way!
• Cutting salt by cooking with herbs

About our cooking classes and tours

• video of our cooking tours in Puglia
• our cooking classes and wine tours calendar

Puglia wines:

• Primitivo wine
• why Puglia wines are so good!

About Puglia’s slow lifestyle

• caprese salad or panini?
• Slow Mediterranean lifestyle in Lecce: it’s siesta time!

I and Marika are back home in Puglia after our wonderful three-week culinary tour in the US & Canada.

We want to thank so much all of you who attended our culinary events in Montreal, Ottawa and New York. It was such a pleasure to share our love for food and wine with so many new and old friends.

We look forward to seeing you all soon again!

Cinzia & Marika

Puglia is the perfect place for those who love capers! We produce tons of capers. Apart from sweets, almost all recipes from the traditional cuisine of Puglia, require capers…from fish, to meat, vegetables and pasta. In Puglia, we certainly use more capers than garlic or other herbs.
Yesterday, I went to the market with a specific mission. I wanted to buy a caper plant and try producing capers….once more! I might have tried 20 times already….always with no success!
It’s really difficult to grow capers. They prefer to grow wild only where they decide to grow! They require just the right sun exposure, the right soil or rock, the perfect climate.
I always wondered how they can get to grow so well on top of the most dangerous sea cliffs…and not in my chalky garden with all my care and love!
When you drive along the Adriatic coast from Otranto down to Santa Maria di Leuca you will see lots of people with bags climbing the sea cliffs: they will be picking capers…and of course the best capers are the smallest ones, the most difficult to pick. May be that’s why they are the most expensive ones!
In the next months, I will keep you posted about what happens to this lovely caper plant!
Just to make sure I and Marika had enough capers for the summer, I also bought some freshly picked capers.
Of course, I and Marika like buying the smallest capers: they are so tasty compared to the big ones.


The recipe to prepare the fresh capers is the following:

1kg freshly picked capers (the smallest)
1kg sea salt
White wine vinegar (as necessary)

Wash the capers, put them in a jar and mix them with sea salt. Leave them with sea salt for at least 10 days.
We use salt to remove capers’ bitterness. Please consider that it is very important you use “sea” salt since it helps preserving the capers’ flavor and taste.
As you may already know, salt preserves food: therefore capers with salt can last for many months or years.
After the first 10 days, put them in another jar, add other sea salt and leave them for other 10 days.

Now they are ready to be eaten. Remove the sea salt, put them in a jar, cover them with white wine vinegar and close the jar with the lid.
Leave them with vinegar for about 5 days. After 5 days, remove the vinegar and cover them with other white wine vinegar. After 10 days, repeat this step once more. Leave them with vinegar for other 15 days, at least, before using them.

For more info please email at: info.stile@gmail.com

If you ever arrive in Lecce any time from 1 to 5 pm you will certainly think this is a gost town.
All houses will have their shutters down.

All shops will be closed and most bars and restaurants will be empty.

Nobody will be around apart from a few tourists desperately looking for open churches or monuments.

The only proof that humans are around may be a bottle of wine with a few glasses left on the table after lunch in a private home.

For those wondering what goes on from 1 to 5 pm in Lecce and everywhere else in Puglia, the answer is very simple: it’s siesta time!
All people go home to have lunch with their families and then, they go to bed for a long siesta…before starting their day again which goes on until very late at night.

After 5pm, little by little people start waking up again: first you see a man riding a bike, then a lady knocking a neighbour’s door…until when you see all the ladies gathering in front their house and chatting about their plans for dinner.

Many medical studies demonstrated that having a proper and seated lunch with our family improves our well being and lifestyle. Moreover taking a short siesta reduces the risks of many heart and health diseases…..of course when associated to a healthy way of eating.
In general I and Marika like this relaxed lifestyle and for the past few years, since we are back home in Puglia, we “have been forcing” ourselves to take an after lunch siesta every day, even just fo 15 minutes. There won’t be anything else you coud do otherwise: you can’t call anyone because all phones will be off; you can’t go shopping because all shops are closed. The only problem with taking a siesta is that once you get used to it, it’s very hard to go back and not take it anymore!

For more info please email at: info.stile@gmail.com

I and Marika woke up very early this morning. We wanted to get to the local cheese artisan before he finished his delicious ricotta cheese.

While the fresh ricotta was being made just in front of us, we were both mouthwatering at the idea of making our favorite Agnolotti pasta, stuffed with ricotta and Parma ham.

If you ever come to Puglia, you will be surprised by the fact that we look like a whole region of vegetarian people: we eat lots of vegetables (eggplants, artichokes, bell peppers, zucchini), legumes (chickpeas, fava beans) and cereals (wheat, faro/spelt etc).
Moreover, all traditional pasta from Puglia: orecchiette (which means little ears), tagliatelle, trofie, sagne…is made with NO EGGS! Just water, a pinch of salt and durum wheat flour (or barley flour).
Everybody attending our cooking classes is always impressed by how diverse, Italian culinary traditions can be from region to region. This applies to the fresh pasta: which is without eggs in Southern Italy; and with eggs in Northern Italy. However, when we come to agnolotti, ravioli or lasagne, also in Puglia we use eggs.
Ricotta and Parma ham are the best combination for the stuffed pasta! You can make different shapes using different cutters: squared ravioli or the round agnolotti. For the filling, instead of the Parma ham, you can also use asparagus or spinach, or a mix of fresh herbs if you prefer.
Please try and tell us what you think.

Agnolotti stuffed with ricotta and Parma ham.

INGREDIENTS
Agnolotti pasta:
(3 servings)
200 grams durum wheat flour (you can use all purpose flour)
2 eggs
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Stuffing and dressing:
150 grams Ricotta cheese
100 grams Parma ham
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
Sage leaves
100 grams grated Parmesan cheese (good quality)
a pinch of grated nutmeg

PREPARATION

Put the flour in a bowl with the two eggs and the extra virgin olive oil. Knead the dough until it gets very smooth.
Cut the dough in little balls and using the pasta machine, stretch out the dough in very thin sheets of pasta.

Cut the Parma ham in very small strips and mix it with the ricotta using a spoon.
Using a teaspoon, place some ricotta and Parma ham on the pasta sheet (in the middle), and fold it.

Cut the stuffed pasta using a pasta cutter and close it with your fingers.

It is important you cook these stuffed agnolotti right away. Boil the water in a pan adding a tbsp of extra virgin olive oil (so that they don’t stick). Add a tsp of sea salt and cook the pasta for 5 minutes.
Remove the pasta al dente and sauté in a saucepan with a few drops of olive oil and the sage leaves, for 2 minutes.
Serve adding the grated parmesan cheese and nutmeg.

To contact us please email at: info@stilemediterraneo.it

In Italy, we say that we are a population of “Mammoni” (mummy’s people): la “Mamma” is a very important person for Italians in general.

Therefore, today’s Mother day is going to be a very important festivity (almost more important than Christmas!). Everybody gives to their Mammas the most beautiful flowers.

I and Marika thought of making a “savory flower”. We were inspired by the red color of the beautiful poppies we now have in the countryside in Puglia.
We prepared this summery strawberry dessert, that we called “strawberry flower”.

Recipe:
(for 6 servings)

500 grams strawberries
20 ladyfingers
1 tbsp sugar
1 freshly squeezed lemon
Mint leaves

For the pastry cream:
4 yolks
½ liter skimmed milk
7 tbsp sugar
6 tbsp 00 flour
1 lemon zest

To prepare the strawberry sauce:
Leave aside 10 big strawberries. Cut in small pieces the other strawberries and place them in a bowl with 1 tbsp of sugar and 1 freshly squeezed lemon. Stir with a spoon and let them marinate in the fridge. After about 2 hours, use a food processor to reduce the strawberries to a sauce (leaving some big chunks of fruit).

To prepare the pastry cream:
Put the yolks and sugar in a pan and mix with a spoon, while adding the flour little by little. Pour half milk and keep stirring with a spoon until the flour is completely dissolved.
Peel the whole lemon zest and add it to the mix. Move to the stove, reduce the flame to the minimum and keep stirring with the spoon, while adding the remaining milk. Keep stirring for about 8-10 minutes. Let the pastry cream cool down completely (for at least 1 hour) and then remove the lemon zest. (Instead of using the lemon pastry cream, you could also use the mascarpone cheese).

Dessert preparation:
Place a first layer of ladyfingers in a serving bowl and, using a spoon, moisten them with the strawberry sauce. Add a layer of pastry cream on top.
Continue adding another layer of ladyfingers, strawberry sauce and pastry cream.
Slice the 10 strawberries and use them to garnish. Finish with some mint leaves.

How do you celebrate today’s Mother day?

To contact us please email at: info@stilemediterraneo.it

One of the good things about living in Puglia, apart from the weather, is that you can get the freshet handmade mozzarella at any small little “bottega” or artisan shops.

For Pugliese people, mozzarella is not just another example of cheese, but it belongs to the specific “mozzarella” category. When you go to a restaurant and you ask for some cheese, they will bring you to the table all the most amazing cheese you can think of: Pecorino, Parmigiano etc. But if you want a mozzarella, you need to specifically ask for: a “mozzarella”.

In Puglia there is a big tradition and culture around the mozzarella.

If you try the mozzarella in Puglia, you understand why. It has a high moisture content and is very tender and tasty. And it doesn’t matter if it is a buffalo mozzarella or a cow milk mozzarella (though, the one from Puglia is traditionally the cow milk mozzarella and we call it fior di latte). When you cut a piece of mozzarella with your fork and you have all the milk coming out….you start mouthwatering and you are just in paradise!
I believe the main reason why mozzarella is so good in Puglia is because lots of artisans still hand make the mozzarella, as opposed to using a machine. One of the best food experiences you can have is to eat a mozzarella a few minutes after it was handmade. Can it be any fresher than this?
Mozzarella belongs to the “pasta filata” cheese.

This means that after the milk is curdled, the mozzarella is stretched and kneaded until it gets very soft. The interesting thing is that the artisan stretches the mozzarella dough with his hands and a wooden spoon. However, this is not as painless as when you make a pizza or bread: the mozzarella dough is submerged in VERY HOT water (which can go up to 90°C). So for sure it’s not something for those who have delicate hands and skin!

Mozzarella in Puglia is made from cow milk, whereas in the Naples region, it is made from buffalo milk. When I was little I was told that cow is lighter than buffalo milk. I am not completely sure this is true, but it has always given me a good excuse to eat double portion of mozzarella.
Many times I pointed out that Puglia has many different culinary traditions. The size of the handmade pasta, the way we make the focaccia, the flour we use for bread and pasta, the way we name dishes, may all change from town to town, even if they are just a few miles apart.
Of course this also applies to the mozzarella. When you are talking about mozzarella in the Bari area (the Northern part of Puglia) you are certainly referring to the burrata. Burrata is a mozzarella which has inside a mix of cream and mozzarella.
In the Lecce area (Southern part of Puglia), instead, it is very rare to find the burrata and it is not very common for the local people to eat it. In Lecce, locals would eat the simplest and tasty fior di latte mozzarella made from cow milk. The fior di latte comes in many different shapes: the small nodini (knods), the beautiful trecce (braids) and the wonderful and huge “bombe” (YES! It means bombs!..because of their size).

All artisans say that handmade mozzarella can last up to one week. I never succeeded with this sort of experiment because I always finished my mozzarella in the same day it was made. However, if you want to keep the mozzarella for more days, put it in a bowl and cover it with milk! That’s the secret!

Have you ever tried a mozzarella from Puglia? How much mozzarella were you able to eat? (including the one you stole from your friend’s plate!)

Contact us at info.stile@gmail.com

This is the recipe. It also works with linguine…but of course of good quality (they need to be “al dente”).

4– 8 servings
- 1000 grams mussels
- 1 carrot
- 1 garlic clove
- pinch red chili
- 10 cherry tomatoes, halved
- leaves of parsley, chopped
- 2 tbs white wine
- 1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
- 500 grams of hand made tagliatelle

Do you have any other recipe with mussels? Please share it.

To contact us write at info.stile@gmail.com 

My friends traveling to Puglia to visit Lecce, often ask me what things they should see, which travel guide book they should buy, from where they should start visiting… and so on. My answer is always: non ti preoccupare (don’t worry!). You don’t need any planning….just come here soon (arriva presto)!

Buying ingredient at the farmer market!

The quality of the ingredients you use to prepare a dish is what makes the real difference in your plate and most of all …in your mouth!!
Buying your ingredients at the market is a really good investment, which will definetely result in a more tasteful dish, certainly appreciated by your beloved ones and friends.
A very fresh ingredient has lots of taste, which means that you don’t have to add any sauce or dressing to give flavor to your dish.
Also a very fresh ingredient does not need to be cooked for too long and in this way you preserve all the good properties and vitamines it may contain.
Moreover, a very important feature is that at the market you usually find local products produced by the local farmers. Every season you find different vegetables and fruit and every season you can prepare different seasonal recipes. Creativity and variety is one of the beauties of cooking!
This is why Puglia cuisine is very simple but SO delicious at the same time. The region is a big producer of all vegetables you can think of (artichokes, eggplants, zucchini), tomatoes, fish, durum wheat, legumes. In Puglia, all ingredients are cooked in a very simple way…but the result is always terrific.

Finally, not everybody has the time to go to the market every day. Then, how do you store your ingredients? or how can you have “fresh” ingredients out of the season, without importing them?
In Puglia, for example, we produce lots of tomatoes in the summer. To have fresh tomatoes in the winter (without making them dry), we prepare the so called Pendola tomatoes in the summer.
Also, in Puglia we produce lots of vegetables in the summer, such as eggplants, zucchini and bell peppers. We preserve them in extra virgin olive oil..so that when the winter comes we still have the local vegetables bought at the local market.

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We are very proud of the article Susan Semenak wrote in the Montreal Gazette, on February 3rd, 2009.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Puglia+rustica/1249202/story.html

You can contact Stile Mediterraneo at: info.stile@gmail.com