Italy Puglia cooking vacations and wine tours

We are in May, the weather in Puglia is wonderful and I and Marika are pleased to announce that our ice cream season has officially started!

Italy is certainly the right place for ice creams lovers. Also, in Puglia there are many ice cream artisans (or artists!) who make delicious ice creams, using only the best ingredients. Hazelnut is our favorite flavor, but we also like pistachio, dark chocolate and lemon. We love ice creams by the cone or the nocciolino (ice cream with warm espresso coffee on top).

However, what Italians from Puglia really die for when we come to ice creams, is the spumone. This is something not to be missed on your gourmet holiday in Puglia! Coming to Puglia and not having a spumone would be (almost!) like going to Rome and not seeing the Trevi Fountain!

Spumone ice cream is made of different ice cream layers (usually chocolate, hazelnut and zabaione) and has a little sponge cake with toasted hazelnuts in the middle. Spumone is prepared in little round bowls and then served on a plate. It is a bit harder than regular ice cream and so you need a spoon to eat it.

Of course I and Marika have our secret places where we have our favorite artisan spumone ice creams, but it would be impossible not to find a good one anywhere in Puglia.

Then, if you want to be not only local but also very cool, you have to ask for a spumone affogato: which is the spumone served with the local amaro or warm espresso coffee on top.

What is your favorite ice cream? where did you have it?

One of the many things we love about the summer in Italy is that, because of the hot weather, we have more excuses to eat lots of ice cream.
We love trying different ice cream artisans and for sure there are many we will be happy to recommend in Lecce.
Lemon granita is what we use as our benchmark to understand how good an ice cream artisan!
Many people think that Lemon Granita is similar to a Lemon sorbet.
There is a main difference which is the fact that Lemon Granita has no eggs, no milk and no cream in it. Just lemon juice, lemon zest, water and sugar!
On a very hot day, (today we are expecting 40° C!), I and Marika like going around Lecce and have a granita for breakfast, aperitif, lunch and as an after siesta drink.
Our favorite Lemon Granita is the one made with little sugar and a grated lemon zest in it!
For breakfast we would have a Coffee Granita with a croissant (the Sicilian way); for aperitif the Lemon Granita; after the siesta the almond granita.
There are many flavors you can choose: lemon, mint, coffee, strawberry, almond, kiwi, mandarin, prickly pears.

This is the recipe to make the Lemon Granita:

Ingredients:
300 grams of sugar
1/2 Litre of water
2 glasses of lemon juice
1 grated lemon zest

Preparation:
Boil the sugar and water for 5 minutes. Then cool it and add the lemon juice and grated lemon zest. Boil everything again for 2 minutes. Let it cool down again and put it in the freezer in a metallic container. Turn the mixture while it is freezing every 20 minutes. The Granita will be ready after 3-4 hours.

Don’t forget to try if you come to Puglia!