Introduction

If you lean in and really listen to the Baron, you’d swear he was getting drunk. I’ve seen the transformation before, when textbook Italian starts to ebb into marble-mouthed dialect, the linguistic synapse of a storyteller traveling back in time. First it was only a word of dialect here and there as we discussed the dishes of his childhood, but the last hour has had me squinting and hanging onto his every word, the way you might really grip the steering wheel while driving through a really thick fog.

‘Before there was so little, so very, very little’, he says, he eyes beginning to tear. ‘We always had just enough but those in the community struggled in ways that I think would be difficult to really imagine today. Unless you know real hunger, I mean real, real hunger- and for years at time- I don’t think the food down here is readily obvious. At least not from outside looking in anyway.’

I pour myself some more wine and disagree with him, at least in theory. I run a cooking school here in the Salento and those that come love the food of the region, for its pure flavours, never needing any of the back story to access the dishes on their own merit. The Baron falls silent for a moment and cocks his head to the side and eats a forkful of his Cecamariti, the way you might half-heartedly attempt to study a picture of your own mother, trying to forget who she is.

‘It’s good’, he says. ‘But I don’t think I can really taste it without also tasting the doorway back.’ He smacks his lips and takes another bite, holding his head low, as if he were in church.

I’ve decided to start my blog about the food of the Salento with the Baron because I believe that you, the reader, believe that the traditional food of the South of Italy is still being made by the poor, the uneducated, the rural and those that many of us would be tempted to call ‘peasants’. ‘Every morning in Italy, all the little old ladies wake up and begin to make everything fresh from scratch’. 

The opposite is more often the truth.

Traditional food in Italy is the process of flip-flopping, where the real luxury today is finding the time to make things from scratch for those you love. Traditional food is being kept alive by those that know enough to love it, that understand that there is always something more to any dish, beyond a list of its ingredients.  And that was what was really happening inside the Baron's mouth as he chewed. 

lunedì 28 aprile 2008

La Cupeta (Salentine Almond Brittle).


La cupeta
Almond brittle

Every once in a while a recipe comes along that seems easier than it should be, so easy in fact that you almost feel cheated that anything that good could be that simple: this is that recipe. Humidity is the enemy of la cupeta so store any leftovers in an airtight jar. This also makes a great gift. And you can use other nuts as well, most famously, hazelnuts.

Almonds
Same amount of sugar, plus 30% more
A lemon.

Most recipes call for equal amounts sugar and nuts but I find the coverage lacking. Pour nuts onto single layer on parchment paper. Gentle heat the sugar until caramelised, keeping it as blonde as possible. Pour the lava-like liquid onto the nuts, covering as best as possible. Cut the lemon in half and use it as you would a spatula, not squeezing but just smearing the hot liquid down into any remaining holes. Allow to cool. Break with hammer, handle of a knife or any other heavy object, remembering that you are aiming to crack, not pulverize.

• A word of warning. This liquid sugar will be very hot and any spills will not only burn through you but head straight to the core of the earth. Be careful.

A variation. You can pour out a third of the sugar at the blonde stage, then go up to red head and finally to brunette, assuming you like your sweets with a bitter edge. Breaking up the cupeta, you’ll have all three flavours together.
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