The Salento cuisine is a cuisine that still preserves many of the ancient and traditional recipes. It is a cuisine linked to the products of the earth, the pastures and the sea. Dishes and recipes handed down from generation to generation. Recipes that are taught today thanks to the mastery of mothers and grandmothers and the many courses of Salento cuisine that intend to carry on the old centuries traditions.

A Mediterranean cuisine based on products that land and sea offer in large quantities, fresh for most of the year given the mild temperatures and short winters.

This does not mean that there are no touches of culinary renewal, but the original recipes are reinvented maintaining a strong link with the traditional ones.

The base of the Salento’s cuisine

At the base of the Salento’s cuisine are simple and genuine dishes, synonymous with home cooking. Homemade pasta, bread kneaded with old and oven-baked flours, meats from grazing animals and farm, cheese and fish. Country-style dishes that respect the land and its old centuries old agricultural tradition.

The wide expanses of land cultivated with olive groves, give a rich oil production among the best existing ones. The great vineyards give excellent wines that stand out on the international scene. From the sea, the fish protagonist of many of the dishes of the towns overlooking the coast. While the hinterland with large expanses of cultivated fields, offers vegetables and vegetables that characterize the typical local dishes. The wheat fields allow the production of different varieties of fine flours: Senatore Cappelli durum wheat, Saragolla Turchesco durum wheat, Arso wheat and Saraceno wheat.

The pasta

In Salento’s cuisine, pasta is home made as the absolute protagonist of the first traction dishes. Its characteristic is the entirely manual production, therefore artisanal and without the use of dies. Born thanks to the abundance and ease of cultivating whole wheat fields, homemade pasta also fulfilled a further task: it could be prepared in advance before going to cultivate the fields, tended to dry in a short time and to keep perfectly for be cooked quickly on the way back.

The main types of artisan pasta are: orecchiette and cavatelli, sagne torte (or ‘ncannulate), triddhri and tagliatelle. Flour, eggs, salt and water give rise to a hard dough that is then processed by skilled hands with the use of a few tools. The tagliatelle here are eggless and have a coarser consistency than the Emilian tradition.

The bread

For the abundance of flour, entering an oven in Salento you will certainly come out with full hands and inebriate by the good smell. Durum wheat bread is one of the most used because it can be stored for several days. The original recipe wants it to be cooked in a wood oven and you will certainly find ovens that still produce it this way.

The varieties of frisa are also abundant, ranging from durum wheat to whole wheat flour, with burnt wheat, etc. Born to be brought to the countryside by farmers at work, it was wet with water to soften it and it was consumed seasoned with oil. . The frisella is an excellent oven product that can be stored for months. In Salento, the frisella is proposed above all in the summer seasoned in a very simple way with diced tomatoes, salt and oil. 

Vegetables and legumes

For the good clima condition enjoyed to Salento, vegetables are one of the most widely used products of the earth because of their abundance. Not only the classic vegetables and cultivated vegetables, but an incredible variety of field vegetables such as chicory and paparina. Then lampascioni, of the onions that are preserved in oil or to eat boiled and seasoned with oil and excellent to accompany the main courses.

Legumes are also an essential element of Salento’s cuisine. The broad bean is one of the most used, the queen of dishes such as “fave and cicorine” in which it is presented as a puree.

Combined with a homemade pasta similar to tagliatelle, chickpeas are the protagonists of a first course such as “ciceri e tria“. In this dish its very name shows distant origins and the contamination of this territory. The word “Tria” derives from the Arabic word “itriya” which means fried pasta. In fact, a portion of the chopped pasta is fried and seasoned with the dish, giving a unique flavor to the combination of foods that compose it.

The meat

The most used meats in Salento are certainly those of pork, horse, rabbit and lamb. The “pezzetti di cavallo” and the “gnumarieddi” are among the most popular and most appreciated typical dishes. The gnumarieddi seem to have a 500-year history.

The horse meat is then used also in second courses of meatballs with sauce or stuffed rolls and always cooked with sauce. Among the cured meats stands the famous Capocollo with different recipes for the area among which stands out the capocollo washed in the vincotto and flavored with herbs before going to smoking with oak twigs.

The fish

Here also eaten raw as in the case of fresh anchovies, filleted and marinated in lemon. Among the mussels, black mussels, clams and sea urchins, eaten fresh and raw, are a much appreciated and requested dish.

Typical of the Salento tradition is the “polpo in pignata“, that is the octopus cut into small pieces and cooked in the “Pignata” a terracotta pot; once it was cooked hours and hours inside the fireplace on the embers of the fire.

Mussels are also the protagonists of a first course, the “tieddhra“. It is rice and mussels with potatoes and zucchini cut into cubes and baked.

Aromas and spices

Sempre grazie al meraviglioso clima mite salentino, profumi di erbe aromatiche inebriano interi giardini  e orti privati. Tipici della macchia mediterranea, nel Salento troviamo rosmarino, salvia, menta, maggiorana, timo, aglio, capperi e peperoncino. Tutti aromi e spezie ampiamente utilizzati nelle ricette della cucina salentina.

Always thanks to the wonderful mild climate of Salento, aromas of aromatic herbs inebriate entire gardens and private gardens. Typical of the Mediterranean bush, in Salento we find rosemary, sage, mint, marjoram, thyme, garlic, capers and chilli. All aromas and spices widely used in recipes of Salento’s cuisine.

Sauces and preserves

The products of the earth such as tomatoes and vegetables, are the great protagonists of homemade preserves. Tomatoes that in the summer are processed and passed to obtain an excellent sauce to be bottled and used during the winter or peeled tomatoes to be used for focaccia or small pieces of sauce.

Eggplant courgettes and tomatoes are preserved in oil or vinegar. Or they are dried in the strong summer sun, spread out on large looms, and then used in winter for side dishes or as a condiment for the famous frisa.

Even the beans are dried and then stored in “capase”, large containers of clay. Not only legumes and vegetables but also dried fruit lends itself to a dried storage. This is how the excellent dried figs are born, simple or stuffed with a whole toasted almond.

Desserts

The most famous sweet of Salento is the “pasticciotto”, a shortcrust shell that contains a delicate cream. In the original recipe the only variations were the one with cream and the one with cream and bitter jam. Today there are many variations and the one that has been most successful is the one with cocoa shortbread and chocolate cream that has taken the name of “Pasticciotto Obama“, having been created as a celebration for the Obama settlement in the White House.

Then again, the orchard a pastry filled with almond paste and jam with bitter chocolate top. The spumone is a very soft ice-cream shaped like a small inverted cup.

Among the typical homemade desserts, we find cartellate, purceddhruzzi, africans and marzapani, the cupeta, the mustaccioli and many others.

The Salento pastry is a delicacy that we recommend to taste even in local bars and pastry shops. You will find an excellent accompaniment to your coffee, which in summer in Salento becomes coffee in ice with almond milk.