Salento Food Guide: What to Eat in Puglia's Salento

They say you can't truly know Salento until you've tasted it. This is a land of cooking that is humble and generous at once, built around bread, vegetables, pulses, fish and one of the finest olive oils in all of Italy. Here are the flavours we'd urge you not to miss on your holiday, from breakfast to that last glass of the evening, with a few pointers on method: where to look for them and how to recognise the real thing.

Breakfast: pasticciotto and rustico

It all begins in the morning, and in Salento breakfast is a serious business. The pasticciotto is the undisputed king: a shell of shortcrust pastry cradling a rich pastry cream, served warm. Tradition has it that it was born in Galatina, just a few minutes from the masseria. The rule among those in the know: it should be eaten fresh from the oven, which means the village bars early in the morning, where pasticciotti run out rather than sit around.

Fancy something savoury? The rustico leccese: two discs of puff pastry guarding a filling of béchamel, tomato and mozzarella. Paired with a coffee, or with a caffè leccese, espresso over ice with almond milk and the great ritual of summer, it's the perfect breakfast at the bar.

Bread and its companions

Salento bread takes centre stage in countless simple, wonderful dishes:

• the puccia, a soft round loaf, often stuffed;
• the frisa (or frisella), bread baked twice until crisp, which you "spunzare", dipping it in water to soften, then dress with tomato, oil, oregano and salt: a Salento summer in a single bite;
• the pittule (or pettole), little balls of fried leavened dough, plain or studded with cauliflower, salt cod or tomato. In winter, and above all around the Immacolata and Christmas, they are a family ritual.

The classic first courses

Orecchiette are the pasta that says Salento: served the classic way with turnip tops, or simply with tomato sauce. Don't miss ciceri e tria either, an ancient dish of chickpeas and pasta, part boiled and part fried, with a texture all its own: you'll find it in the trattorias that cook the real repertoire, and it's an excellent test for spotting them.

The garden, the sea and the oil

Salento cooking is first and foremost cooking of the land: seasonal vegetables, pulses, aubergines, peppers, and the famous "municeddhe" (snails) for the more adventurous. Then comes the sea, with fish and raw seafood all along the coast, and Gallipoli's scapece, little fried fish marinated with breadcrumbs and saffron, sold at the markets. Tying it all together is the extra-virgin olive oil, which here is truly extraordinary: visit an oil mill in November, during pressing season, and you'll understand why.

The wines: Negroamaro and Primitivo

You can't talk about Salento without its great reds. Negroamaro and Primitivo are native grape varieties, giving rise to warm, generous wines that pair beautifully with traditional dishes. And the Salento rosé, made from Negroamaro, is among the best in Italy: cold, in summer, with a frisa, it's happiness in its simplest form. A visit to a winery during your stay is well worth the trip; in November there's also the San Martino new wine.

What to bring home

The suitcase for the journey back fills itself: a bottle of oil bought at the mill, taralli, tomato preserve, a jar of lampascioni, wine from the small producers you won't find outside Salento. The right places are the village bakeries and food shops and the weekly markets, where the locals do their shopping, not the tour buses.

Eating well, living the land

The beauty of Salento cuisine is that you won't find it only in restaurants: you breathe it in at the summer food festivals, in the markets, in the little shops of the villages of the Grecìa Salentina. Staying in a masseria, surrounded by the countryside that grows these flavours, with a kitchen at your disposal to cook what you've bought at the market, is the most authentic way to live it: in the evening, you realise that the table, too, is part of the journey.

<!-- cross:auto --> To explore the area from one base, the whole masseria welcomes groups and families with up to 16 sleeping places, a few minutes from here.