Cooking With Michele® » Puglia

Announcing…Cooking with Michele in Italy 2013!

Michele — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:10:13 +0000

I’m happy to announce that I’ve scheduled the dates for my next cooking trip to Italy. Without a doubt, taking guests to Italy is by far my favorite part of my business. I’ve been to Rome 10 times, and love sharing it with others.
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Brodetto di Pesce

Michele — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 13:33:34 +0000

People often ask me what dish I like best at the coking school in Puglia. Each and every pasta is fantastic. The vegetables are really good. But once again this year, the brodetto di pesce (zuppa di pesce) was my hands down favorite (assuming you don’t count the burrata which is a cheese, not really a recipe). Here’s what’s in it.
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A Day Off and A Day in Otranto

Michele — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:56:38 +0000

After three full days of cooking at the castle, the day off for sightseeing in Otranto is usually a very welcome break in the action. From Lecce we just take a taxi there, but from Spongano, you board this funky train to Maglie…
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Wordless Wednesday – Sights of Spongano, Puglia, Italia

Michele — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:13:52 +0000

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Cooking at the Castle

Michele — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 13:55:22 +0000

There are certain things that are constant about cooking at The Awaiting Table school here in Puglia. First, we will make lots of pasta – every day and for just about every meal – and with each day you will feel more confident in the technique.
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Eat, Drink, Rest…Repeat – Arriving at Palazzo Bacile di Castiglione in Spongano

Michele — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:00:11 +0000

You never know when you are going to a new place what to expect. No matter how much you scan photos online, no matter how many Trip Advisor reviews you read, no matter what people tell you, until you experience it for yourself, you just don’t know how great it’s going to be.

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Benvenuto a Lecce

Michele — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 15:48:25 +0000

There isn’t any quick way to arrive in Lecce. Either you fly from Rome, which means a trip to Fiumucino, a wait, a flight, and a train, or you simply settle into the “express” train (6 hours compared to the old nearly 8 hours) and enjoy your captivity. We read, we chatted, we slept, and we tried not to get too antsy, but by the time we arrived at 3pm, we were hungry. There’s not much open in the middle of the afternoon in Lecce, the baroque heart of Puglia, but thankfully we found a spot that serves the traditional frisa,

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April 17, 2010 – Leaving Lecce

Michele — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:56:36 +0000

How do you say goodbye? For some, you simply slip ut the back door. For others, you make the rounds, offering a special handshake or kiss. For me, I simply pout. I hate saying googbye, I hate thinking how long it might be before I return to Lecce. I hate thinking I’ll actually have to start making my own coffee in the morning, knowing it will take me a week or so to wean myself back off caffeine when I return.But even with a sense of sadness, I pressed on, leading the group from the hotel to the train to the hotel in Rome (yes, with a bus detour from Foggia to Benevento because they still had not repaired the tracks).I was surprised to find that the grape vines had sprouted in just the week that we had been in Lecce, and we passed the time chatting and sharing a bottle of wine Silvestro had sent us on our way with. Since we didn’t return to the hotel until nearly 8, we quickly met up in the lobby to head out for a pre dinner drink near the Pantheon, but once settled in, decided to stay for dinner – totally against my impulses not to dine on the busy piazzas surrounding the highlights. I ordered two portions of rughetta con bresaola for the group to share (arugula with a dried cured beef that is simply divine) at café on the Piazza delle Rotunda, and then finished my trip with the women with one last order of spaghetti carbonara, a bit egg-y, but still delicious. Odd that I didn’t photograph the final dinner of the group, but perhaps I just was out of energy, or perhaps anxious about trying to fugre out out everyone’s flight options given the “plume” from the Icelandic volcanoe. We retired early, which I guess is a good thing, but I could have sat on that piazza all night sipping prosecco and listening to the Andrea Bocelli wanna-be street performer. Nice to know I’m returning next weekend with my husband – with any luck, he’ll be there performing.

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April 16, 2010 – Last Day in Lecce

Michele — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 07:46:56 +0000

Friday began in typical fashion, meeting for coffee greeted by Nina, the town dog, outside of Antonio’s bar. She’s the sweetest thing, and Silvestro tells us that she doesn’t really want to be taken in (several have tried). We set off for the market, abandoning the plan for fish stew for lunch, and creating from scratch a plan for cooking for the day. One of my favorite first courses utilizes a classic food from the area, frise di orzo, a completely dried out, firm bread product made from barley. To utilize it, you rehydrate it in water for 5 minutes, and then let it drain before breaking it into pieces. You can imagine this was a brilliant way to always have bread with you when soldiers were on the move. The salad, called capunata, is similar to tabbouleh, but uses the frize di orzo instead of bulgur wheat. We diced up these small Italian cucumbers (called melone, but they don’t taste like melon) and tomatoes…… then tossed it all together with plenty of our favorite olive oil from the week – Conte……and served this as our first course……followed by a platter of various meets from the market. I hadn’t taken a real nap the entire two weeks that I had been in Italy, and it finally hit me, so I napped for an hour or so before reconvening with the group.It seems the final night of the trip, there is this urge to wander through the town a bit more, snapping those final shots of interesting sights, and even though I already have hundreds of photos from Lecce, I couldn’t resist a couple more. We arrived at Silvestro’s a bit after 7 to start cooking dinner. Now if you’ve never had this strange looking cheese, you might just be thinking this looks like a boring white blob. But if you’ve ever had burrata cheese from here, you would probably get weak in the knees at the mere sight of this. I’ve been talking about this for a year leading up to the trip, and I was determined that we would have it before we left.TThe cheese is mozzarella pieces mixed with heavy cream that oozes out when you cut into it. We prepared it Caprese style with tomatoes and basil, then mixed with a good bit of olive oil and salted at the table, this dish just can’t be beat. We began the meal with the leftover meats from lunch and peperonata, thinly sliced and sweated red peppers coated in bread crumbs and olive oil. Then the burrata salad. I was sitting in the center so had the task of serving everyone – they all asked for a “small” portion, which I knew they would regret, and within minutes everyone was asking for seconds and we finished the entire salad. We had also made the chicken vin cotto from the first night dinner – chicken simmered in red wine and olives and finished with some vin cotto at the end……accompanied by the sandy potatoes, which are just potato wedges coated in olive oil and bread crumbs and roasted until browned and gorgeous. The group wanted to learn the fig tart recipe, so made that dish again, but I wasn’t able to eat a bite by this point in the meal, my tummy full from burrata and potatoes. Our dinner guests on the final night were Timothy (our tour guide Simona’s husband) and another ex-pat Brit, Ian, along with Gia, Silvestro’s friend from the US who arrived to join him on his month long cycling trip through southern Italy. Too many hours and too many bottles of wine (negroamaro) later, we made our way home through the quiet streets of Lecce to our rooms at Palazzo Rollo. It’s always sad to say goodbye – to Giuseppe, to Anna, to Silvestro, to Lecce – but the group seems ready to make their way back home.

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April 15, 2010 – Otranto, Puglia

Michele — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 13:35:54 +0000

Our day began not in the usual fashion of a market trip, but my joining Silvestro in the kitchen to make sandwiches from the leftover sausages and vegetables from the night before. While this appeals to me immensely, he says this is the one dish he can no longer eat after 6 years of cooking classes and picnic lunches. Silvestro changed the schedule this year to accommodate my desire to take the group to an olive grower and to visit the producers of authentic extra virgin olive oil from this region. While somewhat interesting, perhaps more interesting is to visit this region during an actual olive harvest, learning how they make oil not through a lecture in Italian translated to English, but rather by watching the process. We “suffered” through (I say this tongue in cheek as we actually quite enjoyed both of the tours at Pantaleo and Conte), tasting the oil as well as the snacks they presented to the group, then made our way further to Otranto. I’m bringing home a bottle of each – Conte is the spicier ogliarola and Natura is the milder cellina olive. I’m not sure I quite get the idea of eating the raw fava beans in between olive oil tastings to cleanse the palate. To me, they taste more like a highly tannic raw food, and it only makes me want to wash my mouth out before proceeding.But the olive grower at Conte made it clear he was sharing his freshly picked crop with us before settling into his lunch of fava beans and … who knows what else.After our tastings we piled back in the cab with Antonio (that’s him, Mr. Muscles, with his buddy Silvestro) to drive to Otranto. Normally we would head to the water to sit and enjoy a picnic lunch, but we were blessed with a downpour today so we took our lunch to a café near the water and snuggled up together under the umbrellas to literally weather the storm. It’s really a shame as Otranto sits on the Adriatic Sea, just west of Greece, and in the sunlight the water glistens with a bright turquoise color. In the rain, it’s just kind of cold. One of the sometimes endearing and sometimes annoying things in Italy is that everything – churches included – are closed somewhere from noon until 5, but at a minimum for a couple of hours. What else to do but have gelato while we waited for the church to open at 3? We pressed on in the rain, because Silvestro and I knew the group would want to see the mosaic floor in the church – the largest in all of Europe. The ceiling gets little attention because it’s so new (17th century) but it’s worth glancing upward to take it in. Back “in the day”, when many couldn’t read or write, the only way to convey information or educate people was through pictures, and this giant floor contained everything they wanted to teach – symbols for Christ (the stag with the arrow shot through him (the Dutch, I think I learned, were the first to actually paint a “portrait” of Christ as a human)……the hand of God directing Noah……and a depiction of Satan (see the two tongues?) representing hell. In between there are symbols and diagrams of virtually everything that they would have want to teach people at this time (11th century). The church was used as a stable by the Turks when they came to conquer this area – killing as many as Christians in a single day when they refused to denounce Christianity, as witnessed by the many skulls and other bones on display in this chapel within the church. Is that not the definition of faith? 775 people have gone before you, been beheaded in front of you when affirming their faith, and yet you still step up and affirm yours. Whether you are Christian, Muslim, atheist or agnostic, this is quite a demonstration of belief.The church also has a lower level, including one of the rare black madonna frescoes, indicating the influences in this region from Africa.

For the remainder of the day, wee really just lazed around the town of Otranto, watching the rain, before returning to Lecce late in the day. After a short rest, we reconvened for a cocktail and pizza before going to bed at 10, the earliest evening of our trip yet, perhaps soggy and tired from a day of rain. True sign of how tired I was? No cocktail or dinner photos. Purtroppo! Mi dispiace!

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