Little-Visited Puglia, Italy, Offers Warmth, Wine and Gloriously Fresh Food
Miami Herald Jane Wooldridge Sunday, September. 14, 2008
One of the many trulli houses dotting the olive fields.
LECCE, Italy --
Travelers -- even Italians -- may tell you that the heel of the Italian boot is remote and unhospitable. They haven't been here.
Those in-the-know might mention medieval towns spilling from rocky cliffs above Caribbean-blue seas and the mysterious eight-sided Castel del Monte, the cone-topped houses of Valle d'Istria and long stretches of olive groves sweeping across the hills. They will note the baroque confectioner's marvels of Lecce and Galatina, and the cave dwellings of mysterious Matera (though the town where Mel Gibson filmed his Passion isn't technically in Puglia but a neighboring region.)
But at heart, what this sloping rural landscape is really about is food, gloriously delicious, just-out-of-the-fields-and-sea food, and the people who produce it.
Hang on; we'll eat in a minute. First, let's meet a few locals. Say, this fellow in the pretty-as-a-wedding-cake town of Galatina.
The town is shuttered tight for the Sunday lunch siesta, and save for a few leather-clad men laughing in front of a bar door, the place seems deserted. I stop to take a photo of a church facade, then turn to read the historical information on a placard out front.
''Signora, Signora,'' a man calls as I step down the cobbled street. I cower, wondering what sales pitch might be coming next.
He gestures, showing me the church is open; I can go inside.
I step into a delicate little jewel box of salmon-colored walls flanking a rich marble altar surrounding a painting of the Virgin Mary on a startling field of blue. Even after seeing dozens of Italian churches, I'm awestruck. And to think I could have missed it.
In Puglia, such helpfulness seems a way of life. The farm hand who opens the gate so I can see the cows, then leads me through the yard and positions me so I can catch photos of the goats as they're led out to pasture. The bar worker who follows me across the plaza to be sure I understand his directions to the cathedral. The police officer who stops traffic to explain that I should go to the rotonda, then points right so I will understand just where to find the traffic circle. The elderly woman in the church who mistakes me for her friend, then touches my face in smiling greeting. Another 80-plus woman who opens her shuttered B&B just for me, and climbs an extra flight of steps to ensure I get a good view from the roof of the town's most impressive landmark.
''Those Pugilese, they're so sweet,'' said a colleague whose mother lives in Italy. So right.
FEW VISITORS
You might credit that friendliness to the fact that, relatively speaking, few foreigners get here. Only about 3 percent of the visitors to Italy make it to Puglia, says Vittorio Muolo, a hotelier involved with regional tourism efforts. English-language guidebooks to the region are few; Lonely Planet -- which offers a handbook on nearly every corner of the globe -- published its first Puglia guide earlier this year.
Puglia -- in Italian, Apulia -- offers neither the drama of Tuscany's hilltop wall-ringed towns nor the fame wrought by Frances Mayes' artful storytelling. Grimy industry crowds some historic centers; the countryside ambles rather than swaggers.
But obscurity has its rewards. While Tuscany is crowded and pricey by summer, chilly by winter, Puglia offers balmy seasons, relative bargains and locals who are actually happy to see you -- not just your wallet.
The region is such a surprise that when Miamian Robert Frehling celebrated his 60th birthday a few years ago, none of his circle of 40-plus friends -- Americans and Italians -- had been there. Even Frehling and wife Nancy, whose company Oggetti imports home furnishings, had been there only once before in the 80 times they've visited Italy.
''Everybody talks about the south of Italy as if it were Africa,'' he said.
Instead, what they found was, he says, ''charming'' -- towns filled with the cone-shaped houses called trulli, centuries-old fortified farmhouses-turned-inns called masseria.
''The countryside was beautiful. Everything about it was interesting and different. The food was spectacular,'' he said.
``It really clicked. Everyone was intrigued.''
VALLEY OF TRULLI
Ah yes, the food. Hang on; the fava beans drenched in local olive oil and ricotta topped with pickled celery are on their way.
For now, we'll drive through the Valle d'Istria. Just up the hill from Fasano you spot your first trullo, a squat whitewashed house topped with a magician's cone fashioned from gray stone. Suddenly the hill is blanketed with them: Vacation homes with neat tight yards give way to multi-coned farmhouses in sprawling fields of olives and almonds. If the trulli remind you of the Anatolia region of Turkey, there's good reason: the oldest of them were built by Anatolian tribes millennia before the age of Christ was born.
''Trulli Central'' is the town of Alberobello, a hilly 15th century village where rows of pointy ''townhouses'' -- 1,000 in all -- sit hip-to-elbow up slopes and sharp ridges. Some of the dark cones are painted with curves and arrows; their meaning is a mystery until we find a shop whose owner graciously gives us his last printed legend. Some signs are pre-Christian, symbolizing a holy tree that connects hell, earth and heaven, or a prayer sent up from the earthy world to the gods. Others date from more recent times: the Greek letter Omega that means ''God,'' the trident representing trinity.
The picturesque town seems so perfect that it might have sprung from a pop-up book -- and, accordingly, Alberobello is Puglia's most touristy spot. Many of the feet-thick walled houses have been converted to tea houses and souvenir shops, though many of the goods sold transcend tea towels and postcards. If you're looking for local weavings, olive oils and whimsical ceramic whistles that are a regional signature, Alberobello is the place.
But let's drive on, to the whitewashed hilltop of Ostuni, a maze of eateries and nightspots twisting above the Gothic-Romanesque cathedral; the seaside sweetness of Polignare, its historic clifftop plaza balanced on cliffs above the watercolor ocean; the sophisticated fishing town of Trani, its stone port ringed by eateries; the walled medieval port of Otranto, famous for its cathedral's intricate mosaic floor; the ceramics center of Grottaglie, where clay has become a fantastic artform.
BAROQUE EXCESS
And then, the baroque excesses of Lecce and it's neighbor, Galatina.
A 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheater sits squarely in the center of Lecce's historic district, and if you don't have the sense to get out of your car, you may make the mistake of thinking you've seen it all. The parking ticket is well worth it. The poetry of this place lies in the narrow pedestrian streets hiding palaces, churches, more Roman leftovers. The more you wander, the more you are wooed.
The most jaw-dropping is the pale stone facade of Basilica di Santa Croce, a spectacle of twisted columns, floral wreaths, men and beasts carrying the world on their backs; it's no wonder the church was 100 years in the making.
But Lecce isn't merely a testament to the power of the King of Naples -- who annexed Lecce in the 1500s and poured in the cash in his struggle against the Turks. A college town of nearly 100,000 and cosmo crossroads of immigrants from Turkey and Africa, Lecce pulses with local life. In early evening, the streets are mobbed with students, buskers, elderly couples, families whose children bat the bubbles spewed by a mechanical bear -- all out for a stroll, and, even on cold nights, ice cream. The crowd at the gelato shop behind the amphitheater is always four deep.
CROSSING THE LINE
We drive on to Italy's instep and Matera, home of the cave mazes called sassi.
Technically speaking, Matera lies in Basilicata, not Puglia. But you need a map to tell you've crossed the unseeable line.
The historic town is itself invisible, tucked along the edges of a rock abyss. It's not until you've followed a series of confusing signs to the city center and parked your car that you find the town plaza, more touches of baroque and the imposing duomo.
Keep moving. What you've come to see lies over the edges, in the maze of what has been called ``spontaneous architecture.''
Most cities start at the top: A hillside, a mountain, a promontory. Matera swells from the bottom, an ancient series of caves carved into a ravine and expanded by man into homes, more than 100 churches with sweetly painted walls, and now, even restaurants and hotels.
This is human cityscape at its oldest, dating to the Paleolithic era tens of thousands of years ago. But what is most staggering is not that people once lived this way, but that they lived so until almost 1960, when the government moved half the population of 30,000 into modern housing above. When Elvis was first gyrating his pelvis and rocking the blues, families lived here within simple whitewashed walls as generations before them, sharing a single space with farm animals, resting on straw mattresses, cooking beneath an arch with a hole cut out for smoke.
Unlike so much of the world, Puglia retains a sense of space and place, with mile after mile of seafront and hills undisturbed by modern clutter. A spin through the hills brings us over a rise and to the startling sight of an imposing tower reaching more than 1,700 feet above the plateau. Even when you're expecting it, that first view of Castel del Monte makes you want to pull the car over and simply stare.
It's downright otherworldly, reminiscent of Wyoming's Devils Tower -- except this was made by man. Frederick II, to be precise, Holy Roman Emperor, king of Romans, Germany, Italy and even Burgundy, in the 13th century, though it is said that he never actually stayed there.
The strange, stark tower is a mish-mash of styles, with Romanesque lions, Gothic vaults and Islamic-style floors. Tower sides rise 80 feet, and standing in the open, eight-sided vault feels a bit like traveling through time; you expect a mail-clad knight to tromp through any minute. Theories about the place abound: Was it a mathematical puzzle, an astrological observatory, or something even more mystical? Standing in the open atrium of the octagon, you can believe it was something more -- until a tour group arrives to spoil the magic.
LUSTY CUISINE
Oh, but I promised you food, didn't I?
For days now we've driven through grove after grove of olive trees, and it should be no surprise that more than half of all the olives grown in Italy are rooted in Puglia. So, too, are nearly half the country's earthy vegetables. Add the sea that edges this heel, and you should expect honest, lusty cuisine.
Which is just what you get: cheeses made fresh each morning, carrots and fennel and artichokes straight from the earth, fish still flopping in the market. All are cooked in oil pressed from the olives growing outside the window of your masseria -- a centuries-old fortressed farmhouse-turned-inn.
The land is dotted with them. Massiera Torre Coccaro has been recommended for its cooking classes, and dinner the evening I arrive gives testament that this is a culinary choice well made. The menu offers up wild boar ham with buffalo mozzarella, pistachio-breaded quennel of ricotta cheese with tomato and olive sauce, scampi millefeuiles with shaved fennel, homemade ravioli with a toasted walnut sauce, risotto with mussels and artichokes, baby lobster with bacon in a carrot and ginger sauce. Every ounce of bread and broth is homemade.
Vittorio Muolo, the owner, allows sadly that he is on a diet and must stick with grilled fish; even that is enough to set the taste buds to tango. I've died and gone to food-lovers paradiso.
Luckily, the cooking class my friend and I share the next morning offers simpler fare -- dishes I might actually reproduce in the basic utility of my South Florida kitchen. Sous chef Luigi Giannuzzi good naturedly guides the way, with the help of an interpreter. Baked grouper with potatoes, tomatoes, olives and capers is straightforward enough; a bit of dicing and oil in a pan, and we're good to go. Fava beans soaked in water, boiled, mashed and seasoned -- spare not an ounce of olive oil -- and served with Swiss chard aren't hard, though the soaking takes all night.
But when it comes to making the ''little ears'' -- fresh orecchiette pasta made from semolina and deftly fashioned with a quick hand and sharp knife -- I'm about to flunk out. Surely it's smarter to buy them than spend hours making this paltry handful. Luigi saves the day, and our homey meal looks downright gourmet when it's delivered to our lunch table on prettily arranged plates.
For every town, it seems, there is a fresh flavor: fish from the currents just beyond yonder cliff, cheeses from the grazing fields just across the stone wall, vegetables from the earth tilled just so for generations.
A restaurant just 30 miles from the sea might serve wild mountain greens or mutton but never fish. So it is at Antichi Sapori in Montegrosso, a small town on Puglia's rocky spine.
I've been brought here by Sebastiano de Corato, whose grandfather started the region's first major commercial winery, Rivera. Regional grapes -- especially primitivos -- are just hitting oenophile radar screens, and though his family's wines have been praised for years -- Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were photographed with a bottle of it on their table during filming of La Dolce Vita in 1960 -- brand awareness is just beginning.
The restaurant proves a cheerful but simple place -- but packed with locals, who know the ingredients served at lunch were likely picked by the chef's father this very morning. Antipasti and pasta are usually chef's choice; it's the main dishes we'll choose.
The plates are delivered, one after another: Grilled spring onion in olive oil with sea salt; puffy focaccia topped with local herbs; a wild bulb fried with olive oil; yet another spring onion baked with Parmesan; a fluffy fresh ricotta with candied celery that is worth a moment of prayer; broccoli roasted with olive oil (are you seeing the pattern?); a hard cheese with caramelized onion; soup with chickpeas and barley; orecchiette with tomato sauce and braesola. Eating pretty much every dish on the menu costs about 35 euros -- including dessert and coffee.
''In Apulia, cuisine is all about olive oil,'' says de Corato. I believe him. In the course of lunch, I've had about a gallon of this robust and lusty finish. It's much yummier than that bottled stuff I buy at Publix.
In these arid rocks, cows can barely graze enough to keep from fainting. The local fare comes from heartier stock: sheep, horse and donkey. In the name of journalistic authenticity, we try all three. Like most of Puglia, they're a delightful surprise. The lamb chops are tiny and tender, the horse belly, smoked and tasty if tough. But the donkey, oh my, the donkey is sweet as slow-roasted short ribs -- a delicacy to be tested, then tasted again and again.
Just don't tell Shrek. Some things -- like Puglia itself -- should be kept just for those can love them.
