The typical Salento cuisine is a humble one; but one that is highly nutritious and rich in taste and flavours with touches left behind by all the invaders of the area. The Salentine cuisine is a typical Mediterranean cuisine, full of the tastes and smells of the sea and the earth. Each dish can trace its origins back in time, such as the dried figs that are a reminder of Roman domination and which Roman housewives used to give their husbands to keep up their energy; similarly are the “puccia” and the “uliate” bread flavoured with black olives and also sold with onions, tomatoes and touches of chilli peppers. A typical first course is tagliatelle with chickpeas, a popular dish that is still greatly enjoyed today. The tagliatelle was flavoured with tomato sauce, ricotta cheese and basil and made in the form of ‘sagne’ (long twisted strips) as a direct mirror of the baroque style found on the columns of buildings at that time. Orecchiette and macaroni (minichiareddrhi) is the most popular dish of the region today and are eaten with greens or meat with great enjoyment! The second course was left to the housewife’s imagination that invented potato foccacia filled with ricotta and spinach for example. The Turkish influence in the region is still found today with the prevalence of lamb dishes, such as rolled fillets filled with herbs.
It was necessary to eat high-energy foods in the shortest time possible to continue with the hard work of working the land and subduing it as much as possible. For this reason, farmers carried food which was simple and easy to make, such as figs and dried beans and dried barley rolls (wheat was the nobleman’s prerogative), which were first steeped in water and then flavoured with chopped tomatoes, rocket and oregano. The “taieddhra” is the triumph of Salentine cuisine and is made from courgettes, potatoes, artichokes, onions, tomatoes and mussels. The sweet semolina nuggets (purceddhruzzi) and the “ncarteddhrate” are typical Christmas treats and are modelled into the shapes of roses and decorated with aniseed seeds and honey. Each dish comes with its own pedigree and history and is enriched with wine and olive oil, the liquid gold, which has a taste and smells all of its own.