Jamie's Great Escape Jamie in Puglia

Date Published:

24/10/2007

From generation to generation

Jamie went deep into the heel of Italy to discover the secret to good regional food. He learnt that there was nothing the Italians loved more than having their food cooked for them– just the way their mamas do it.

The test of time

When he prepared a meal for a family of bakers in Puglia, he discovered they had very clear ideas about their traditional dishes like pasta al forno: keep them simple, use good ingredients and don't tamper with the recipes, which have been passed down the generations.

One satisfied Italian grandfather praised the meal for being rustico or rustic – traditional peasant food which is the backbone of Italian cuisine. Many of Italy's most famous dishes have grown out of cucina povera, the cuisine of poverty. Pizzas were originally a way to liven up unleavened bread, and many pasta dishes, such as pasta con aglio e olio, served with just garlic and oil, were devised to make the most of the simplest and cheapest produce.

Unlike French haute cuisine, which is built on expensive ingredients and sophisticated preparation techniques, Italian cooking remains tied to its peasant past in both flavour and appearance. This is particularly evident in traditional Pugliese food. Travel companies are marketing Puglia, with its fantastic climate, unspoilt beaches and unique architecture, as the new Tuscany, but it differs from Tuscany in many ways – most profoundly because of Italy's historic north-south divide.

Contrasting cultures

The north of this long, thin country is cooler, greener and lusher than the south. This makes it ideal for lucrative cattle and sheep farming. It also enjoys good communications with the rest of Europe, which explains why Venice was an important, influential city for so many centuries. Other great cities of the north, such as Rome, Florence and Milan, have always attracted more industry and wealth than their southern counterparts.

By contrast much of the south is a hot, harsh environment. Puglia is luckier than its neighbouring regions in that the land is flat and fertile. It is now known as the garden of Italy, and provides around 75% of all Italian fruit and vegetables.

However it is the poverty of the area that has dictated much of Puglia’s food traditions. Here, as Jamie discovered, necessity has been the mother of invention. The pasta is made without eggs, and the bread is made from the hard-grain durum wheat flour that flourishes locally.

Creative tradition

The people of Puglia have a very healthy diet based on vegetables, including wild mushrooms, wild chicory, and lampascione, the bulb of a wild tassel hyacinth – foods foraged from stony fields and abandoned terraces, rather than cultivated. They don't eat much meat – until a few years ago and beef was almost unknown in this region, where people prefer horsemeat.

In this culture of scarcity, nothing is wasted. Stale bread is cut into cubes or crumbled and toasted in oil to make a garnish for pasta and vegetable dishes. On the programme, Jamie produced a salad using the local bread called panzanella.

In Britain, Italian food is considered on a par with French cooking, with some of the best restaurants in London like The River Café and Locanda Locatelli producing exquisite meals. But, as Jamie discovered, many of these dishes have their roots in making ends meet and using up leftovers – just as the mamas of Puglia have done throughout history.