Puglia: The food's too good!

There is a problem with Puglia, and it is this: There is too much food, and it is too good.


About 50 percent of the vegetables grown in Italy come from this region, and more than 50 percent of the olive oil. The ingredients are so fresh that even the simplest meal will ruin your taste buds for the shipped and processed foods so common in the U.S.
There is a problem with Puglia, and it is this: There is too much food, and it is too good.

About 50 percent of the vegetables grown in Italy come from this region, and more than 50 percent of the olive oil. The ingredients are so fresh that even the simplest meal will ruin your taste buds for the shipped and processed foods so common in the U.S.

That wasn’t the point of my cooking class today at the Masseria Torre Coccara, but it may be the most memorable. That, and the fact that making pasta from scratch is an incredible amount of work. Four of us worked an hour to make enough orecchiette – the “little ears’’ – for lunch.


The other dishes were easier: a sauce of anchovies and broccoli rabe, pastry pockets filled with mozzarella and tomatoes, and a grouper baked with vegetables, capers and olives. Most of the vegetables are grown here on the farm – five minutes from the earth to the table.

And what isn’t grown here comes from just down the road, at small farms where the people gladly show you around even though you aren’t speaking the same language. But then, food and farming are the same language – whatever the words.

That wasn’t the point of my cooking class today at the Masseria Torre Coccara, but it may be the most memorable. That, and the fact that making pasta from scratch is an incredible amount of work. Four of us worked an hour to make enough orecchiette – the “little ears’’ – for lunch.

The other dishes were easier: a sauce of anchovies and broccoli rabe, pastry pockets filled with mozzarella and tomatoes, and a grouper baked with vegetables, capers and olives. Most of the vegetables are grown here on the farm – five minutes from the earth to the table.

And what isn’t grown here comes from just down the road, at small farms where the people gladly show you around even though you aren’t speaking the same language. But then, food and farming are the same language – whatever the words.