Cucina povera - peasant food

Quando minti oiu e sale ogne erba se pote mangiare –

When you add oil and salt all greens are edible.

Rather dour, but that peasant saying tells it how it was – you made whatever the land gave you merely edible, delicious was a goal too far. For most of the last millenium until the mid 20th Century Italian peasant life meant walking a tightrope between debilitating hunger and survival.

And yet the idea of Italian peasant food, or more particularly rustic food, is hugely popular and slightly romanticised.

Rustic-style tomato stall at Slow Food Festival, Ostuni

One of the themes of John Dickie's book Delizia: The Epic History of Italians and their Food is how there is considerable mythology (exported internationally) about Italian cuisine being a rural cuisine, when in fact many of Italy's best loved dishes are those developed in cities while the peasants outside the city walls made do with very little.


Maybe the appeal of cucina povera or rustic cooking in an age of food plenty (for some of us) is just that there's something wholesome about simplicity.

There are a couple of dishes that I keep seeing on Puglia's trattoria blackboards, which fall into the real 'cucina povera' camp.

One is orechiette with cime di rapa (pasta with turnip tops) and the other is fave e cicorie (broad bean puree with chicory).

I had a go at making the pasta, and we found the other dish in a jar…

Orechiette with cime di rapa (pasta with turnip tops)

Orechiette (meaning ‘little ears’) is a common pasta shape of Puglia. Apparently pasta wasn’t peasant’s food, even though it’s ridiculously economical today.

But the sauce is. I had no idea what a turnip top looked like; it turned out to be like purple sprouting broccoli, but green and more leafy. Also slightly peppery. I think it's actually part of the broccoli family. Chard or broccoli would be a fine substitute.

This is roughly how we made the pasta (serves 4):

Olive oil

10 large cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped into about 6 fat slices

15-20 anchovies, roughly chopped

1 kg turnip tops/purple sprouting broccoli/chard - the stalks should be chopped into pieces of no more than 2 cm.

Chilli flakes

500g orechiette or other small pasta

Pecorino or parmesan cheese, grated (or if you’re feeling really peasant, toasted breadcrumbs).

Saute slices of garlic and anchovies in the oil until the garlic is softened, then remove with a slotted spoon, leaving the flavoured oil in the pan.

Meanwhile, put the pasta on to cook to al dente in plenty of boiling salted water.

Sauté the greens in the flavoured oil for about 7-8 minutes or until the stalks are tender. Turn off heat.

Stir the cooked anchovies and garlic back through the greens. Add the chilli flakes to taste. Stir through the cooked pasta.

Sprinkle with parmesan or pecorino.

Fave e cicorie (broad bean puree with chicory)

We visited a Slow Food Festival at the castle ramparts in Ostuni and came across this collaboration in a jar. 

We had never heard of this dish and the conversation with the stallholders was restricted. Between bad Italian, not much better English and a lot of gesticulating it went something like this:

How do you eat this?

Like this.

Do you heat it up?

No, you eat it like this.

You don’t even warm it up a little bit?

Frown. If you want, it’s not important.

Despite the perfunctory information, the whole exchange was overlaid with enthusiasm for the dish. We bought the jar and further internet research revealed a legion of broad bean puree fans.

It was tasty, like a thick hummus, and the greens were definitely edible.

The ingredient list reads salt, oil, broad beans, chicory. Simple.