Next time you hear one of his solos, sit and really listen. I mean really listen. I'm not the first to say this, but the solos of Louis Armstrong are famously appreciated for being reduced to their absolute essence. There is no flab, nothing that can be trimmed away without leaving
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This is the first part in a series of posts dedicated to fish and fish cookery, and especially how it's done here in the Salento, the thin slice of gorgeous land dangling out into the middle of the seas that make up the Mediterranean. Like you, I had always tended to fall back on a handful of recipes, virtually neglecting the rest of the monger's case. This summer, all of that is going to change.
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No pasta in all of Italy is harder to make. As a teacher, I push them back later into the week, introducing the easier shapes first. This cuts down on the frustration that usually accompanies learning how to make le orecchiette, nearly always dictating a rich, Rococo-like stream of blasphemy, free-styling profanity featuring donkeys and broomsticks, followed by the tearing of one's own hair and garments.
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I'm going to get hate mail on this one. Drive bys with rotten fruit. Perhaps Molotov's through my front windows. If I had children, larger kids would pull their braids and push them down into the gravel. Folks would kick my puppy, if I had one. Cartoonists and late night television hosts are going to use me as the butt of their jokes. My friends' wives will stop accepting my handmade pastries, their top lips peeling off their teeth in barely-hidden disgust. Local officials are going to 'register' me. Nope, this one is going to get messy. But I'm going to post this anyway, no matter the mob that forms at my front door, their soily pitchforks shaken in rage. Here is my recipe for Taieddhra, a dish so entrenched in the cooking of the Salento, that folks not only disagree on how you make it, we can't even decide what to call it.
Read MoreIt’s a brothy, rib-sticker of dish, more like a hearty stew than your average pasta soup.
Read MoreSo, slowly, I started asking students what they saw as we passed the countless vineyards of Puglia, following my own beliefs that you can’t understand Italian wine until you understand the label and you can’t understand the label until you understand what actually happens in the fields. ‘Well, they look
Read MoreI’m told that I have something of an obsessive personality, although I really prefer the adjective, ‘enthusiastic’. Take summer dishes: This year I’m only really eating three dishes, and all three of them nearly everyday. The only one that is not part of my normal summer repertoire is this new, lightened
Read MoreCome autumn time here in the Salento, a number of fruits and vegetables start to turn up in the markets, just like old cherished friends that have moved away but then came back again. Faces light up. There is lots of smiling, happy greetings. ‘We’ll have to have you around
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