All right, the food:
Sea urchins. These were featured in a BBC programme about
Puglia a couple of months ago.
Apparently they’re best eaten live, straight from the sea, like
oysters. Sliced and cooked in a pasta
sauce, they don’t taste of anything much, except the sea, like oysters.
Supermarket vegetable
pricing. You know how you have to
delve through nested layers of blurry pictures on a touchscreen to find an aubergine? Not in the Famila supermarket in San
Vito. Each item that has to be weighed
has its own unique number: Melanzane
(aubergines)? 035. Just put it on the scale, key in the number,
out pops the sticky ticket. Brilliant!
Chickens. The local chickens are tiny by Brit standards,
but one is just right for two people. And
they taste like chickens used to taste in my childhood. I asked what they were fed on and was told: ‘Quello che c’é’–
whatever’s around. And they’re about €4 each.
Italian meal
structure. It’s now permissible to
have less than four courses for lunch.
But
it’s possible to have four courses for dinner. Ristorante dell’Annunziata (I
think) in Ceglie does antipasti
(twelve of them!), primo (big bowl of
linguine or bean puree), secondo (I chose rabbit stew) and dolce, for €20. All local fare and
recipes. Carafe of local Primitivo plonk
included.
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