Three towns from the heel to Milan

In Mid-August it was time to leave the dry, disorderly beauty of Italy’s heel and head north towards Milan and onwards to Spain.

200km out of Ostuni and the landscape greens; we are passing the Gargano, the spur of the boot. We drive through the Foggia region, once mainly known for its wheat, now where Italy’s poorest paid domestic and immigrant workers pick and pack the millions of plum tomatoes that are canned and exported all over the world.

We are heading the opposite way to the traffic. Southbound on the autostrada seems to be the whole of northern Italy not already at the beach, families packed into 4WDs and roofrack-topped peoplemovers, and frequent episodes of congestion. Northbound the traffic is light, except inexplicably hundreds of expensive Swiss plated cars overtaking us for more than 100km. 

We have three days to reach Milan, and three stops each offer a slightly different Italy. 

Trani: the cathedral floating on the headland

Trani Cathedral

Trani Cathedral arch

Ancient limestone architecture shot against a turquoise sea and a cloudless sky: the combination of visual brilliance, neck strain gazing upwards and accompanying heat is dizzying. Built in the 12th Century and perched on a point, this cathedral might well have just sailed in off the sea.  

A marina full of leisure boats with a pristine old town, Trani could be a port on the Italian Riviera, hundreds of miles north and a world away from Puglia socially. Locals have abandoned the street in the heat except for no less than three wedding parties and their photographers (who I think must have the easiest wedding photography gig in the world – until I review my photos and I’ve cut off the cathedral’s campanile…) 

Best food moment: bocconcini and roast eggplant mini panino.

Chieti: the light softens

View from Chieti looking east

Just inland from Pescara in the Abruzzo region, Chieti is a classic hill town that underlines we have moved north: from the church and monastery the view down the valley is thick with the diffused light beloved of renaissance art and the town is an elegant grid of interlocking high-arched, marble-floored arcades that are cool to wander through at the end of a warm day.

Jewellery workshop, Chieti

Best food moment: the Abruzzo is known for its love of chilli pepper. A fat slipper-shaped calzone stuffed with sautéed spinach spiked with warming chilli from a bakery in one of the squares was juicy and flavoursome. Zucchini and mozzarella pizza is also tasty.

From the oven of the Abruzzo: mozzarella and zucchini pizza and calzone with spinach and chilli

Ravenna: glitters

Mosaics at Basilica di San Vitale, Ravenna

Ravenna was important to the first gold-loving Byzantines in the 5th and 6th Centuries AD. Its legacy of this period is its glittering mosaic art, some of the most intact, still spectacular pieces of visual culture to be found 1500 years on. There are eight sites in Ravenna on the UNESCO World Heritage List. I only managed to visit two, but I think one of them is the best of the lot: Basilica di San Vitale. My photo simply does not do it justice. It is an octagonal structure with its interior lined on all sides, including the ceiling with this reverent, detailed craftsmanship.  

Best food moment: Ravenna is in the fat hunk of a province called Emilio-Romagna that wedges in between the Po River and the Appenine mountain range in the north-east of Italy's peninsula. Famous throughout the country for its abundance of hearty food, it is where many of the staples that have been exported internationally and are known generically as ‘Italian food’ originated.    

Ragu, the shredded beef or boar stew served with pasta that has evolved in the English-speaking world to become Spaghetti Bolognese (named after the province’s intellectual and vibrant capital Bologna); lasagne; mortadella sausage (which in the United States became ‘baloney’ after ‘Bologna’); parmesan cheese; Parma ham; and balsamic vinegar di Modena. These flat red plains rich with farms and crops, and seductive hills on the horizon, are a gastronomic hub, and a pleasure to drive through. I ate lasagna in Ravenna: this was not a firm baked dish, but loose sheets of pasta verde layered with meat and cheese sauces.

Lasagne in Ravenna

Arrival in southern Italy

It’s now been two weeks since arriving in Puglia from Greece. Along with living here in the white walled city of Ostuni, some eclectic reading has helped me get more of a feel for the region.

Southern Italy was once part of Magna Graecia, later it was part of the Byzantine Empire and it has had countless other invasions and occupations over the last 1000 years. Poverty and peasantry have defined it in relation to the more prosperous north.


The history is wretched, but a more positive story is emerging now: Puglia is now one of the most celebrated regions of Italian cuisine internationally and upmarket tourism is starting to take off.

Cathedral in the City of Taranto - once the prized capital city of Magna Graecia, now its old city has a more down-and-out feel

In terms of food, it is exceptional. In Crete I was learning more about the ‘Mediterranean diet’ which has helped define international dietary recommendations for the last half-century. There are some similar features between Cretan and Pugliese cuisine:

1.     A history of poverty has been hugely influential on the culture and cuisine

2.     The Pugliese are very partial to seafood

3.     Fresh fruit and vegetables are abundant and transparently grown 

4.     Olive oil is very significant in cooking  

5.     Superb regional cheeses (although some cows milk used here as well as goat and sheep)

6.     Delicious flatbread and pasta made from local durum wheat (this is more important here than in Crete)

7.     Pugliese produce and cuisine is highly-regarded throughout the country as a whole, as Cretan food was in Greece 

Insalata de mare at our local pescheria

My eclectic reading was not from careful research, it’s slightly random, but recommended if you’re visiting the region.

1.     Delizia: the Epic History of Italians and their Food by John Dickie – the history of Italy through its food. An impassioned, colourful but authoritative narrative on why food is so important to Italians. Highly recommend for pan-Italy/armchair travel.

2.     Head Over Heel: Seduced by Southern Italy by Chris Harrison – an Australian falls in love with a Pugliese woman and relocates to Italy.  Harrison is an intelligent, witty, yet unsentimental reporter of the eccentricities and complexities of Italian life and its characters. It gives a bit of insight into the north-south divide.

3.     By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble Through Southern Italy by George Gissing – I chose this because Gissing is one of my favourite Victorian novelists. I’m only browsing it, but there are some interesting snapshots of the region from 100 years ago, for example:

“Wonderful to observe the representative diner. He always seems to know exactly what his appetite demands; he addreses the waiter in a preliminary discourse, sketching out his meal, and then proceeds to fill in the minutiae… An ordinary bill of fare never satisfies him; he plays variations upon the themes suggested, divides or combines, introduces novelties of the most unexpected kind…. Throughout he grumbles, nothing is quite as it should be, and when the bill is presented he grumbles still more vigorously… in general these characteristics consist of a fundamental good humour.”

The lavish Basilica di Santa Croce in Lecce that took 100 years to complete

I’m also starting Carlo Levi’s ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’ which is about the poverty of the south he experienced as a political prisoner from Genoa in 1939.

Thanks to the kindle for transforming my holiday reading. All of these books I’ve purchased online in seconds having been tipped off about them browsing online or in a guidebook. I would never have followed up/tracked down otherwise. 

Best food moment: what I ate on that first day in Puglia...

Hot focaccia topped with thin potato slices and rosemary or studded with tomatoes and olives.

Panino con polpo – barbequed octopus drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil and stuffed into a white roll at the fish restaurant on the corner of the street.

Toasted almond gelato

A whole creamy burrata cheese with crisp chewy white rolls, soft in the inside and the sweetest brightest cherry tomatoes off the vine. 

Tomatoes, bread and burrata cheese

Sweet golden flesh peaches for dessert.

Greek salad days

 

Sunday lunch spot, Almyrida

The iconic Greek salad – cucumber, tomato, onion, feta, olives, olive oil and oregano – celebrates a lot about Greece: the bounty of its fruit and vegetables, the artisanship of producing world-class cheese in an arid, rugged terrain, and luxurious olive oil, which, prized since ancient times, evokes something of that history. You do not have to go far to search for a decent Greek Salad. Ultimately you can’t disguise a bad tomato. As long as those are firm and juicy, you’re halfway there.

Moving on from the classic Greek I have been sampling and experimenting with a few other Greek cheese salad combinations, selecting ingredients that are cheap and plentiful in Crete. The addition of cheese makes for a more substantial light meal than a vegetable salad alone, which is too much like being on a diet.

Greek Salad

The original Greek Salad

Here is my first attempt at Greek salad, served with olive bread. Normally I would only use fresh herbs in uncooked dishes, but in Greece dried oregano is used everywhere, and it actually expunges a significant boost through its companion ingredients. The pack I bought was produced nearby, presumably recently. I think as long as you rotate your dried herbs often enough you’ll get the right flavour (not like me – my oregano at home in London was about four years old!)

Watermelon, cucumber and feta salad

Watermelon, cucumber and feta salad

Watermelon season on the island: every beach shop has a crate full of them on its terrace, farmers drive utes with the back filled with melons and a scale hooked over the side, announcing through a tannoy they are in town and parking up the end of the road to take custom, while delicate black-frocked grandmothers and surly teenage sons are put in charge of manning palm leaf-shaded stalls right along the main highway.

Watermelon and feta is a refreshing sweet and salty partnership. In this version I added cucumber as it’s from the same family as watermelon with a similar texture, just one is sweet and one isn’t… also pink and pale green look pretty together.

Cretan salad

Cretan salad with mizithra cheese

We ordered a variation of Greek Salad at one of our local tavernas in Almyrida, Crete. They had named it Cretan salad and added pieces of Cretan ‘rusks’ as large croutons (rusks here are large pieces of dried bread: it is often found in a simple meze snack called Davos, which is a rusk drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with oregano and topped with chopped tomato and crumbled feta, a bit like bruschetta). Instead of feta in this Cretan salad they added a beautiful soft, fluffy goats cheese called mizithra, which originates in Crete and is a protected product.

Fresh mizithra is similar to ricotta in texture but with a distinct goat’s milk flavour; a favourite breakfast pastry here combines mizithra and honey in a pastry case, all flecked with cinnamon.

Cretan watermelon, cucumber and goats cheese salad

Watermelon, cucumber and goat cheese salad

Taking inspiration from the Cretan salad, I adapted the watermelon and cucumber salad to include the fresh myzirtha cheese. This is not easy to get; even here you can’t buy it packaged, it’s dished up fresh at the deli counter. I would suggest maybe using ricotta and feta crumbled on top, or a very soft young goats cheese. I also added shredded mint leaves and chilli flakes.

3 to 4 small cucumbers or one telegraph cucumber, peeled and cut into large chunks

Quarter of a large watermelon, seeded, and cut into chunks the same size as cucumber pieces

20 mint leaves, shredded finely

1/3 teaspoon chilli flakes (or to taste)

150g mizithra or other soft goats cheese or combination of feta and ricotta

Drizzle of clear, runny honey (optional)

Drizzle of olive oil

Combine cucumber and watermelon pieces in salad bowl with two thirds of the mint leaves and the chilli flakes.

Layer cheese on top with your fingers. Sprinkle remaining mint leaves on top and drizzle with honey (optional) and olive oil.