Rustic Dishes from Sicily & Puglia | Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes | BBC Documentary

[Music] [Applause] after a couple of lovely months traveling through those leafy green tunnels of Southwest France exploring great food along the way I finally reached the Mediterranean one of those silky pink morning's where the sky and the sea become one I realized then that I wanted my journey to continue to explore the food of his Great Sea so I exchanged one vote for another not quite as intimate and went from Marseille to Corsica I took Porthos Pillars of Hercules his travels around the Med and I found it inspiring like him I arrived in Bastyr the old capital and discovered great mountain dishes good charcuterie and wonderful sheep's cheeses and then I crossed that choppy little strait that separates Corsica and Sardinia this is where pecorino is king suckling pig and fish and lots more fish in fact Sardinia's softer and I think this beer epitomizes the very essence of the Mediterranean from there I caught an overnight ferry to the largest island Sicily and now it was Italy big-time fabulous markets full of color and inspiration and lovely pasta and big fragrant lemons which the writer D H Lawrence a great observer on the Italian Way of life said lemon trees like Italian seem to be happiest when they're touching each other this is taormina on the northeast coast it's a pretty big resort now but Lawrence loved it here in self-exile it was a magnet for the English aristocracy wanting to live the Mediterranean dream and this is where he wrote see in Sardinia Lawrence lived here with that view well you can't see Etna particularly well today cuz it's rather hazy but I've been here before at night and you see the glow in the distance and it's quite sort of threatening quite ominous and I think anybody that lives from tar mania right down to Catania and have the same feeling of living in the shadow of the volcano and it erupts quite frequently indeed I'm told it's about to do so again it was just a very good piece in in the book which says as follows how many men how many races as Etna put to flight it was she who broke the quick of the Greek soul and after the Greeks she gave the Romans the Normans the Arabs the Spaniards the French the Italians even the English she gave them all they're inspired our and broke their souls [Music] laurens also noted there was something that people who live under the shadow of volcanoes have in common and that is they never leave off being amorously friendly with almost everybody emitting a relentless physical familiarity that is quite the wildering he also notes presumably because of the fertile soil and the big crops it nourishes that the men are quite fat with great macaroni paunches the Mediterranean has got so much we could learn from it it makes me slightly sad really because what I love about the Mediterraneans of fresh produce in particular the markets I mean I I was in the market in Catania the other day and I was just thinking that director David asked me to film yet again in a fish market I was thinking what possibly could I say that I haven't said 25 times before in all the fish programs are they he just said wait till we get there and of course when we got there it was just the whole Italian sense of theatre sense of occasion there the way they they lay everything out the incredible artistry of everything they do I just think these are the most wonderful color my mother I remember my mother had a belt like that in the fifties it looks like a sort of fashioned belt they're called spatula in Italian but we call them ribbon fish or scabbard fish they're very good eating there's an excellent dish that they do around here with red onions done sweet-and-sour a bit of vinegar and a bit of sugar and a bit of salt and capers and these are just rolled in flour and shallow fried in olive oil it is yummy there's some limpets over there I've just got to ask them what do you do in lymph nodes I was thinking of there's so much going on there's so many interesting things things I've never seen before well I'm in heaven all you do is just use one shell to open another well they're going on our plateau to freedom air I must say they're um chewy of course but they've got a lovely flavor I mean a slightly choice to light flavor just well sorry I'm a bit busy eating them at the moment that sensational but I've got no problem with these please some the cold Ricci here that for sea urchins absolutely delicious lovely on their own don't need to put any lemon juice with them they're perfect as they are this is the bit you eat this little orange bits and now it's only a morsel but seriously it encapsulated all the fresh flavors of the seat you can taste seaweed in there and ozone and just the smell of the sea that they they are a real gourmets delight I must say if you don't have you never tried them you must don't go for the tin once though waste of time something I've been thinking all through my Mediterranean trip so far has reached its culmination here in Catania market I just think the food is so important to us it is the most important thing we do why not enjoy it when you're compared and I've said this so many times before but this is like a sort of opera [Music] stipulation of singing you know if you ever fell to the low and downs come to a market somewhere like Catania you'll be up again you'll be happy you'll be you'll be flying and when I think back home those sort of fluorescent-lit aisles of food what's that all about this is what it's all about [Music] [Music] I really like this I mean it's very artistic it's a sort of Jackson Pollock of a fish display and he's clearly got a real artistic talent I love the way to put lots of fresh seaweed over there and dotted it all with those red mullet which look it just looks so I tried it and he's got lovely little handwritten labels for everything I mean he just loves his fish well enjoyable as it was there was only one blip on the horizon and we failed to get the permission of or seek the blessing of the capo Dei capi or boss of bosses of the fish market [Music] huge mistake because he was plainly not amused and we decided we better beat a hasty retreat but it was time for lunch anyway well hope that fish monger that was sort of just dick relating and the surroundings around in the market doesn't come in here I don't know what was the problem I think it was probably we were on he's patching and really like the cameras but um this is great I mean this is just a sort of food I love got telling so I don't know what the Italian word is some tiny little winkles look at those they're very conveniently the way they're cooked you can just pull them out just like that you don't need a Winkle picker and some some pulpo some octopus it's so fresh I mean I just got this Maxim that in any city with a good market choose the restaurant nearest the market and everything will be fine and it is [Music] quite near to palermo is the holiday town of mandela it was very fashionable for the mafiosi to come here on their holidays in fact the famous bandit Salvatore Guiliano would come here surrounded by his armed bodyguards in the forties he would ride a white horse along the beach with guns stuck into his belt well it's that sort of place but I'm here because I've been given an opportunity to find out what the fishing is like in this part of the mad now you would have thought that this kind and generally placid sea would afford small boats of daily living and I remember now thinking back a bit sadly how there we were on a perfect morning but there was something not quite right very little fish toto who owns this boat has been fishing this Bay for forty years or so although I'm only halfway through my journey I think I can gauge what the true story of the inshore fishing in the Mediterranean is like and it makes me wonder where the myriad of fish restaurants that line its shores get their fish expert I've been trying to ask Toto what the fishings like and I think you said it's it's pretty awful and I must say from what's coming up I can see what he means something there's it's not good fishing he's very enthusiastic as earlier on he picked up a John Dory South Pier drove which is that fish there we have exactly the same fish otherwise we don't have any of the rest not a lot for a morning's work the fishings better in Padstow so how does Toto see the future you see Salama is this ironical watch and basically when he was young he said there was plenty of fish but nobody around here and any money so they couldn't sell it to anybody now everybody around here's got plenty of money largely to do with drugs I'm told but there's no fish it's all done on mothers I love the way Italians give this little smile and shrug when life deals in a bitter blow it says so what that's life let's get on with it this is the harbor of Messina and over there those mountains are the Italian mainland and barely a mile away but I've come here because it was a point of departure of one of my all-time food heroines I suppose it must seem a bit weird because this is just a place on a harbour but it means a lot to me about a story about food you've probably noticed that I've mentioned Elizabeth David a great deal through my journey through the Mediterranean and this is important because the ferry is just left for Stromboli and it was off Stromboli that Elizabeth David and her lover had almost a final meal of the old era she had lobster and mayonnaise and was then captured by the Italians who just declared war and escorted back to Messina and thrown into jail where as she put it she spent time with prostitutes and other ne'er-do-wells eventually she was released and made it to Crete but at the time she abortion wrote about that time the following which I think is incredibly important particularly as her first book was called Mediterranean cooking and I think that sort of germs of it the seeds of it happened about then we'll think often of the things we have done together of the canals and the wine and the red rocks of my beloved France of the sea white with Nautilus off the coast of Corsica of down in the Bay of Naples of a certain lobster mayonnaise we ate between one life and another for she made it to Crete as I said and there she lived in comparative poverty but she ate tomatoes and peppers and she recalled the taste of the olives then as old as the taste of water itself what a great line I wish I'd written that Elizabeth David casts a long shadow because she's the first to come to mind when one thinks about the food of the Mediterranean but you know there's someone else and that's why I came to Puglia on the heel of Italy's boot because over the years this woman has had an enormous influence on me and she's a relatively unsung hero this is a bit of a pilgrimage in my journey through the Mediterranean is to visit the house where patients gray lived patients gray for me was up there with Elizabeth David she wrote a book called honey from a weed which is I suppose a sort of thinking cooks cookbook the basic concept was that this spare cooking of the Mediterranean where weeds play quite a large part produced honey in the sense that everything about AZ cooking and indeed Mediterranean cooking is very frugal the locals make the best of what they've got and I think patients gray should be read by serious cooks because it is as she said that combination between parsimonious nurse and having masses of everything that balance between the two which is where great cooking truly is for 30 years she lived with a sculptor Norman Mullins near a number of marble quarries which provided the raw materials for his work they lived frugally and she despised newfangled kitchen appliances with a vengeance preferring a harder rustic life and the food of the local peasantry well I myself find this quite humbling and only in the sense that it's so simple and I think do we really need all that equipment I mean I know that she hated fridges even because she just wanted to buy things on a daily basis in the village and make something out of them then come back the next day and when I look at that that heart there and that's where she did most of her food and bar beside which she would have had a earthenware pot of chickpeas or father beans cooking very gently and that was her bed just beside the farm on that hard stone and a very austere life but a bit of a shrine to me her son Nick gray lives there now she died a short while ago aged 88 I noticed from my copy of your mum's book that at the beginning she says poverty rather than wealth gives the good things of life their true significance and she really liked earlier because it was so close to the earth people here are so close to this earth and still are I think when they arrived which is 30-something years ago this really was the end of the world and modernity had not arrived in any form you grew your food or you starved and she and Norman regarded the peasants around here as their professors in their teachers people who taught them how how to grow things and how to live with the seasons with the crops that grew here and never there was no question of putting New Zealand Kiwi slices on filet mignon from the argent I knew at what was here the thing that I really loved about this book just the one little thing in it apart from in fact the whole idea of this simple life is so attractive was the honey from the weed idea the the idea that you can you can go out into the to the hedgerows and out into the fields then gather weeds and gather bitter weeds and take them home and make something of it I mean it doesn't happen at home but this was a tradition in England - dandelions and Nettles but I mean people did collect them both for medicinal and culinary purposes here it's not lost I mean you can see people coming out with huge plastic bags and filling the boots of their cars with the weeds and they valued the flavor well it's true we've lost our interest in gathering wild greens but I can't imagine any of us could have gone past this without buying a kilo or two fresh peas harvested straight from the fields do a kilo doing see I'm very happy about this I've just noticed a load of these guys on the on the roads earth driving up let's thinking up I've got to have some pits last night I was in a restaurant in Ostuni and we had a load of antipasti and they just brought out a big bowl of peas in the pod and I was sort of thinking imagine if I did that in England you know people think I've gone bonkers but it was such a perfect thing is the thing I really remember about the meal because there was so fresh there the first piece of the season I can remember lots of expeditions with my children - pick your own intending to stop the freezer with beans and peas or make jam with strawberries and raspberries but none of it got further than the car childhood memories that doesn't get any better than this but back in Padstow what to do with a bag full of new seasons peas it's such a pleasure to see the first peas and broad beans of the season it's a bit like hearing the cuckoo for the first time I was just reminded of a funny story that Keith Floyd once told me he had a restaurant in the South of France and he said it was just so exciting when the fresh the fresh flagellate arrived for the season and for the first two or three days you were eating them in great enthusiasm and after about two weeks you say no thanks no thanks this is peas braised with onions and Parma ham it's the sort of thing you only want to cook when the peas are at their tippy top start by searing the onions in some olive oil very hot oil so they color up quickly add a small amount of water and cover them so they are left to stew and soften cut the ham into small chunks cool Betty as they say in italia they'll end up looking like little jewels in a sea of green now this is really good Bistro food I think with a glass of turf chilled white wine and some crusty bread would make a memorable lunch then some roughly chopped garlic two or three close is quite enough and finally at last in with the peas they won't take long to cook and you don't want mushy peas just like to add a little bit of water because it's just a tad dry is to stew down in that water all go into with the olive oil make a nice little emulsion and now some seasoning I just fill this dish I'm on a bit of a roll this is the sort of thing people love I mean similar dishes to this or you can get in Spain that's pee and serrano harmony in France would be on how Italy with Parma ham and of course not forgetting our own pin ham soup it's a great combination and finally a little not too much salt not too much otherwise the salt police will be on to me again serve them in a warm bowl with lots of flat leaf parsley stirred in there's an argument going on in Italy at the moment some trendy chefs are refusing to put garlic in anything and the old brigade are outraged as indeed am i this wouldn't be half as good without it they've got to be joking I can't stop myself thinking that maybe Tolkien came to perlier on his holidays and saw these traditional farmsteads called truely and went back to Oxford to create the SHA home to the hobbits they're surreal no cement just local stone and gravity I'm driving along probably the most famous Road in history the veer up here or the Appian Way it goes over 300 miles more or less in a straight line all the way from Brindisi to Rome and it still works I wouldn't mind betting that the food round here is around pretty much the same as when the Roman legions marched down it 2,000 years ago they'd have had wine wheat sheep and oxen there were great cultivators of vegetables the fishing of course would have been considerably better than it is now but the olive tree ranked supreme in their culture as it still does today AZ olive oil is considered one of the best in Europe I'm going to an Easter feast in Ostuni we no doubt olive oil will play a large part of the meal I think the jungle drums must have been working overtime because we got a fantastic invitation from Armando ballast ROTC to go to his Masseria that's a large farmhouse called ill frantoio he heard we were filming Puli AZ cuisine and said this Easter feast celebrates all the best food that Puglia has to offer I love these naturally pink Mediterranean prawns dipped in a light batter made with cream and chopped basil and then fried for about a minute they remind me of Japanese tempura and then this is a first for me while disparaging from the hedgerows are lightly cooked in olive oil and tomatoes and onions sweated down to be later mixed with wild greens from the nearby fields things like puppies dandelions and wild sorrel but the star of the show was this what tech a tree is doing here is making an yellow comput at a in Cacho and who chose that term earthenware dish there which looks attractive in his own right and first of all she's put some olive oil and salt in the bottom of the culture and and then a layer of sliced potatoes thinly sliced potatoes and then she puts a layer of garlic tomato parsley parmesan pecorino salt and pepper a bit more olive oil then alarm and I asked him whether it was new seasons lamb and I said not just new seasons lamb its milk fed lamb it's a very very light in color and then another layer of them tomato garlic salt and pepper and the two cheeses and then finally some the rest of the potato on top and another layer of tomato garlic two cheese's salt and pepper and then a generous sprinkle of olive oil and then it's in the oven for I would guess about 4550 minutes probably 200 degrees I'm very very much looking forward to China absolutely right up my street and my gosh the sort of that as as Easter special dish well all the great and the good from the surrounding villages were there and there's nothing like being in Italy on a feast day we've only seen a fraction of what the ladies in the kitchen are prepared because Italian feast go on in excess of ten courses and they're not little ones so you need to starve yourselves for at least two days before you arrive I've been waiting to taste this ever since I saw it going to the oven and and I'm not at all disappointed it's wonderful and I have to say there's quite a lot of things that I taste on my journey and have tasted which I think well that's nice in time and place but I wouldn't take you at home but this one I would this one is so good and so simple and it's got such a sort of Italian feel to it I mean there's many dishes like this all over the Mediterranean and indeed it's a bit like Lancashire hotpot but it's that combination to me of the tomato the garlic the olive oil and those two types of cheeses that going that just make it sensational it just says so much about the sort of Italian personality so really really sort of forceful and full of fun the wild greens that were so prominent in the feast were collected by a delaila Maskull Oh who's been doing this since he was allowed and I know it sounds very much like a cliche but he just does what his grandfather's shown him all the ancient Meadowlands surrounding that hotel is free from pesticides and chemicals so virtually everything you find is edible oxalis must be like sorrel oh I know salts very very lemony very tart so ich [Music] my first wild asparagus just thinking who would have thought that this tiny from D think cultivated and come out great thick spears like like a grown in gardens everywhere but actually this world asparagus has a beautifully fragrant taste and makes wonderful pasta I've always wanted to go out with somebody that knows about gathering things from the world because some I've always had a great enthusiasm for it myself I just love going for walks and gathering things but I don't know enough and I'm guarantee there's only a small percentage of people in back home that do this I mean we just don't know about these wild greens in the spring and it's such a pleasurable thing to do it as they're all saying so good for you Amanda this food is lovely but all the time in England there is a difference into the butter cooking and extra virgin into the beer cooking into the wine cooking is the weather difference in Apulia for many centuries no rain no grass no cows no milk no cheese no steaks s terrible but the grandmother apulian grandmother invent everything for the grandchildren and all the flowers all the wild herbs all the legumes in Apulia everything ever too much test for the Sun for the herd and cook don't use nothing for they exalt the natural test at the flower of and cola or average food well we all know what Orlando means and that is if something grows well and naturally then cooking should be kept to a minimum I can't think of anything better to illustrate this than by going out and seeing fishing for ricci friend asked me the other day of what was special about boolean foods and the first thing that came to mind was was reaching sea urchins I remember about 30 years ago going to Greece and the thing I've thought about sea urchins then was say extremely painful because everybody stepped on one when they went swimming it took ages to get those little black spines out here fur but these days I'm yearn for them and I think of pretty I think of Ricci and I think of particularly later on today a lovely plate of pasta with Ricci because there's not a lot in a richly but when you combine it with some pasta and some garlic some olive oil maybe a bit of parsley you get that real tasty love see they take about 18 months to grow to this size then around here they were so plentiful the conservation and overfishing never crossed the fisherman's mind but because they're a tremendous delicacy the numbers are getting fewer and for the first time the fishermen are starting to think about what could be done to ensure that Ricci remains plentiful most people who will come to eat is today will simply have them raw with a bit of bread and a glass of wine as I said when I was in catania market you only eat the orange rose but they're lovely they say it's an acquired taste I quite like nearly thirty years ago this is one of my top five dishes from the Med and it's cooked here by rose are not a lot about the Wolof as you can gather she likes it very much so there's lots of olive oil a humongous amount of garlic and lots of sea urchin rose I'd say about 50 of them but one portion then a splash of wine and a handful of chopped parsley and let it warm it's cooked enough at this stage then in with a pasta and in this part of the world it doesn't take too long cinque minuti five minutes and she says it has to be tossed or I'm not quite sure what she means by I think she means it has to be fairly hard well like all good Italian cooks that pasta goes into the saute pan so that he gets it completely covered in all those wonderful flavors of the sea garlic and oil okay it is I mean when when the Italian to talk about ll dente okay they really mean it I mean the pasta in here is almost hard and you couldn't serve it back home like that people wouldn't go for it but it's lovely it's got this lovely taste I mean everything in it I doubt it anything that's in here was grown more than two or three miles away from this spot I think that's what's just so special about Italian food it is so simple it's just what's around what's available and of course it has a sort of a sort of well who wanted a better word a sort of truth about it which which just makes it so so wonderful [Music] you've got to arrive on the stroke of 12:00 to get a seat here I was really surprised to see that most of the people eating these were young probably students from the towns nearby I expected grizzled old fishermen puffing and knocking back grappa I think the popularity of seafood in Puglia like this grilled octopus with the young is because they all grew up on it they will seem to respect it for what it is that's a typical pullian scene on the on the coast and it's not exactly wonderfully attractive I mean you've got a Stoneworks over there and the town in the background but one thing you can say about there's no big buildings no hotels no high-rise blocks it looks a bit scruffy but when we arrived a friend who hadn't been before said it's that it I said yeah it is it actually I felt quite sort of defensive about earlier and I was thinking it's a bit like Spain used to be in the sixties before tourism really took off there and the thing about here is it there's only Italian tourists and I don't know local tourists don't seem to make such a demand on that on the landscapers as sort of a slot with our sort of fish and chips and you know British pubs and all that sort of thing and demands forever more comfortable accommodation I mean I just really like this place and I just hope that they sir learn the lessons of places like Spain and and just keep it simple keep it local because that's actually what everybody likes [Music] I've been here to the village of marítimo de Diez Oh quite a few times it's where I've been on my holidays for the last three years the convento de santa maria is an old 15th century convent converted into a rather porsche bed-and-breakfast and the reason I came here is because I really like the food its uncompromising really good Pooley AZ cuisine and what I like too is that there aren't any menus you eat what you're given it's run by Lord and Lady MacAlpine he was treasurer of the Tory party when mrs. Thatcher was in power they're cooked Pierluigi had been preparing a chicken Diavolo devil chicken first he spatchcock the chicken by cutting through the breastbone and flattens it out gives it a good bashing and now for the marinade which is made up of crushed black peppercorns crushed dried chili olive oil lemon juice crushed garlic and sea salt that's it and he leaves it for an hour another reason I like coming here is because of Alastair mcalpine I mean he was bought up in the Dorchester Hotel and when he was a little boy he used to spend a lot of time watching the chefs at work in the vast kitchens it's really good to Witter on with someone who really knows about food now the chickens very simply grilled over hot charcoal and left to cook for 40 minutes yes it does take that long because you don't want the far too hot or it'll burn the chicken and you baste it from time to time with the leftover marinade that's the secret and also turning it to keep it juicy and moist just like that this chicken is very wonderfully fire it gets tremendously well with this wine and the beautiful motivo which start to get pure primitivo but it's the oldest vine was here when the Romans came that's the wine they drank people are very hospitable here they're very welcoming but they're also very reserved and unintrusive and I think what people find when they come here is a very authentic way of life so it's not a pastiche of Italian life it really is Italian life most people who live in the villages here will have a small plot of land that they'll cultivate themselves they'll be eating their very own pork having slaughtered their very own pigs they'll be pulling up the lettuces from the ground there at this time of year looking for wild asparagus so they're very immediate they have a very immediate relationship with the land and with the see I've got this artist friend that lives in Tuscany and she thinks that she doesn't she doesn't like Puli she doesn't get it she thinks it's just well she thinks a bit scruffy really where do you have to say that when you live in Tuscany it's the north of Italy rubbish Buddha always have done always will good but that's why farmers come in fact very exciting done yeah people have a desire to serve you it's a pleasure to serve you they didn't get joy out of it I lived for ten years in Venice where service was inconvenience between cooking and collecting the cash the British have come to this part the world ever since Elgon bench the Greeks marvels it has it's the whether you've seen the light for the first time we see paradise you live in England you get this gray like this Stearns or bad luck you suddenly find yourself amongst people but colossal exuberance no one would put as much pepper on chicken in England as this it's not possible this has got life to it you eat the chicken it goes with the wine goes with the climate goes with the people wonderful place [Music] indeed it is a wonderful place Tuscan has been in the spotlight for some time now since the eighties and Umbria still preening herself with the fame she found in the 90s so maybe Puglia were there really simple uncluttered food is next I think this dish fits well into the landscape of Puglia its fennel sausages with lemony potatoes these are very slim sausages as you can see and I'm making them into tiny little chipolatas it's really the dish looks much better if you can use these little sausages you should be able to get them from any good Italian deli the thing about them which is some so important is that they're not like British sausages if not that I've got anything against British sausages but they've got no cereal in them so they're very very meaty I think the whole point about them being very meeting is because you need sausages that have quite an intense amount of flavor in themselves they need to be able to shine through and declare their existence without disappearing into the overall dish this little dish lunchtime at a restaurant in a place called marítima de dee so what are lights about but it came with a whole load of other vegetable dishes because Italians Fuli AZ are very very famous for their vegetable dishes that do lovely things with broad bean puree for example that obviously lots of Oh aubergine dishes and courgette fritters things like this but I really like this I like the sausages and the potatoes and the flavor which was of lemon not just the juice but the zest as well in the same pan just softened down some coarsely sliced onion you don't need to cook them right out at this time just let them become a little transparent then add a couple of cloves of sliced garlic cut some potatoes into chunky pieces preferably a waxy variety because you want them to hold together the flowery ones will fall apart of course put the men with the onion and garlic and turn them over to get them nicely coated in that flavored oil now put those tasty little sausages back in again add a bit of water for a bit of cooking liquor and season it well do you know what I think I think this dish will be done by lots of people so they're making these serious for a long time now I get the torts of people and what I discover is it's really the simple dishes that people do at home and actually it be the simple dishes that I do at home as well and the thing about this is interesting right you've got sausages you've got potatoes you've got onions all cooked together with olive oil a bit of garlic and a bit a hint of lemon zest it sounds interesting and it sounds doable but just remember this use good sausages use a good fresh lemon - with unblemished skin because it will be obvious in the finished dish squeeze the juice into the pan then put in half a dozen bay leaves now put the lid on and wait until the potatoes are done finish with chopped parsley and serve we may not have the constant sunshine that they have in Puglia but that doesn't mean it can't have the wonderful flavor and what's more we can have the Primitivo too from now on this dish will always remind me of the Macao pines in their bed-and-breakfast convento and their enthusiasm for Puglia they told me there's an old Puli AZ saying which runs they soon Oh a pure Felicia Aidan Oi nobody's happier than us I'll drink to that this is Ostuni and the architecture reflects the closeness that culture has with North Africa you see it in southern Spain and Sicily Ostuni is often referred to as the white city lucha da Bianca and we based ourselves here for a couple of nights because there were so many things to film nearby but then in this paradise we woke up one morning to find that things were not what they should be it's like being in an early film noir mainly because the camera was on the blink as you can see I feel a bit dazed we just had the Land Rover stolen it was in a lot compound don't know how they got in but that's all that's left the door lock I just don't know what we're gonna do next I mean I know it happens all over the world you can get the Alondra was stolen in London or Plymouth indeed but it just feels a bit different here so far away from home and particularly because pool is so nice we've had such lovely food and it's beautiful and all the people are so nice frankly I don't know how we're gonna carry on because some that large it was great well carry on we did this dish is probably pull his most famous far they edgy Coria mashed up dried broad beans with a sort of Italian dandelion and it's prepared by Maria the cook in the hotel where we had the Land Rover nicked well I just noticed Maria's just using the outer leaves to go with the favre a puree because this chick Oriya that at this time of year has his wonderful buds which are a bit like when I suppose asparagus or my suppose I've got this lovely subtle bitterness and I made this salad with garlic olive oil vinegar anchovies salt and pepper delicious I tell you I can't resist the aroma of fava beans some beer broad beans they are I mean leave this puree under a rock alarm beautiful unfortunately yeah we didn't realise that Maria was having to go back to work at the restaurant just down the road because I wanted to say cook it right from the start but what she's done is take half a kilo of the brood right broad beans and a couple of potatoes barely covered them with water a little bit of salt and just cooked gently until the waters all taken up by the beans and the potato by which time they're so softly they don't need to be pureed just just stirred with a wooden spoon for chaduranga me no no no don't get the I asked her why she cooks this and she said I do this dish because I've watched my mother doing it my grandmother doing it and I love making it it's a healthy and genuine meal and we grow these legumes and we eat this almost every day my children are not very keen on it but I still cook it for them well that's kids for you I was thinking if anything sums up the superb vegetarian cooking of Julio it's this dish far they eat Chidori a-- and it's funny but i was just thinking it's a bit like polenta i sort of think that this could be as popular as polenta and she was saying earlier on there that their children and grandchildren don't really like it because they think it's some poor people's food she has to put potato with it and say that it's potato pure then they'll eat it but you know I've got a suspicion that in a year or two this will be fetching really big money in West End restaurants but I doubt if it would change their lives the say we were depressed by the loss of the land row there was an understatement I mean not only did that go but half our gear as well and I just thought we all did that we were it was on his way to Albania were it not for our Italian researcher animatio she was totally unstinting in her two telephone calls to well the mayor the governor the chief of police Interpol and what I can only think was probably a local mafia boss's wife because we got it back remarkably it was still full of our gear ana said it was a stain on the character of perlier and she wanted to wipe it clean [Music] BBC also an economical illa and single-handedly she succeeded we did get it back but this isn't it the old land rover was a bit knocked about I'm on my way to see Giuseppe Lally and his dogs big and Frau truffle hunters extraordinaire there's not a strong tradition of hunting truffles this far south in Puglia it's Piermont a little is north west that's famous for them especially the luxurious white ones Giuseppe wasn't told by anyone that this part of a puli AZ countryside the Campania could yield truffles he said he just had a sixth sense about it especially in this ancient wood that was once inhabited by the Greeks and then later by the Romans but maybe you're thinking this was all a setup for the camera but he didn't plant any I'd been with him before and it's just remarkable at these dogs find the truffle so quickly the truffles are really quite small but they still have that scent of luxury which i think is a mixture of honey and lomi earth alright that is a [Music] just smelling them you I mean nobody could fail to love that that smell it's sort of earthy and elemental and slightly well slightly sexy in a funny sort of way me Greek WA maybe I shouldn't be saying that but that's the truth of its Bella persona incoming celibate give your go simpler than Yahoo they are very uncommon if it's not the truffles it's the dogs he wanted to find a way so that he could work with his dogs be with his dogs all the time and it's given me a bit of a pang actually because as you know probably no chalky my dog died and I'm just so taken with this or a relationship between him and he just loves those two dogs big and proud and Giuseppe was saying that he was working in restaurants in northern Italy and he saw the amount of money that was paid out for truffles and he just had this sort of idea nobody told him that you could also get truffles like this in the South Italy and nobody taught him had had to train his dogs to to find the truffles he just thought well if you throw things for dogs they'll retrieve them so he just started throwing little bits of truffle for them and they got the picture and I mean these dogs must be worth a great deal of money and these well I always think the best thing to do with truffles excuse me I'm more interested in talking to you is just to have them leave very very simply maybe with some risotto some pasta or just simply grated on onto some fried eggs wonderful [Music] Nadel near the black truffle [Music] this is the simplest way I think to enjoy them I'm so hungry they're simply shaved on eggs fried in olive oil have a friend who says to make a truffle omelette simply put the eggs unbroken into a wooden box with a truffle and the powerful scent will penetrate the shell and flavor the egg and you will still have your truffle left [Music] when Bianca yeah just solo in but look at this lacy shavings of both white and black God knows how much that would cost back at home in a restaurant Oh I feel like a fox in the hen house no I mean I've got black truffles I've got white truffles I got eggs I mean it's all I want and I think the thing about really truly wonderful food like truffles or caviar is you need lots of it thank you very much lynnie anthem this is how giuseppe prepares truffles in his kitchen first olive oil onto a plate and then grated parmesan over that and now greater black truffle over the cheese then he mixes it all together and in true Italian style he puts a generous helping of tagliatelle onto the plate and covers every bit of it with the oil cheese and truffle next he puts more of these lovely things on top shavings of black truffle I think you could only do this dish if you are a truffle hunter but from one extreme to another this inexpensive dish goes back centuries and it's cooked here by me no Maggie and his sister xia they're champions of coulis AZ cuisine well this is a bit of a brother and sister act making an orecchiette orecchiette Kanchana deer at their koncham aid the wrapper and zere is making the orecchiette and a source Mia's making it's so practical the Italian language orecchiette that just means little ears and that's what they look like I just love watching someone like SIA making something so effortlessly like this or a cure today I just had a go a few minutes ago and it's incredibly difficult but when you look at it you think oh I could do that just a little cut a little press a little pull and it's done so what's going into the sauce then Nina well Rick I think this is the most simple sauce that you could make right and when we talk about Puglia olive oil is the main main ingredient that we use in our kitchen and then we have some garlic chopped garlic yeah he gives all these the traditional flavor in a very strong nicely song flavor of the garlic and then we put some anchovies not too many but salted ones also another very important ingredient is the tomatoes those two matters look at them those are they were picked in last July in the name of them is Pomodori al filo and fellow on the strange ring or Pomodori a tyranny a lasting everlasting eternal tomatoes the flavor that they keep is all the flavor of the Sun over the soil you know they are gonna say over the summer of Puglia forgive me saying this but I just get a bit perplexed because I'm hearing all this wonderful chat about gee Mother Earth Day and the quality but tomorrow's oral anchovies I keep hearing whales I keep hearing the Welsh valleys what's what's going on here I have been a lucky person in in my life and I met a fantastic girl from Wales after four months I was speaking English Welsh because I met my wife Carol anyway I am proud of that sometimes Mina has customers suggesting improvements lady said that oh and really liked it but what about adding some bacon to this sauce or something said bacon said why if you are just saying that it is nice you know it is good said why should we add bacon this is part of the Mediterranean diet and we don't add bacon when you are at home you can do as you want but if when I cook it I'll cook it like my mother did for years this works really well at home using sprouting broccoli I could spend a whole series in Puglia on really good vegetable dishes that have been created in terms of poverty but it's still extremely popular in times of Plenty wow that looks good I'm interesting the breadcrumbs actually I would have thought you to put sort of parmesan on it Oh parmesan in Puglia parmesan didn't exist first of all because it too expensive but also because it's part of the culture of North Italy although we use it also in the South now this is the parmesan of the poor people breadcrumbs fried well it I think that's very apt I must say and it works an absolute treat because it tastes really crunchy in there yeah this is quite delicious yeah what I like about it is it's vibrant there's so much flavor in there it's so typical or that the food of this area it's sort of like you know really gutsy stuff it is you know me know people write in when I'm doing these TV things and say you and they say you said you liked it but we could tell you didn't well the fact is I've eaten most of it it's absolutely delicious great so I'm off to Greece from Bari in Puglia in the new Land Rover and I just think because I touched on it earlier I owe you an explanation and that is that when we came here originally our Land Rover was indeed stolen then our camera was seriously playing up so he came back and did it all again as Robbie Burns once said the best-laid schemes of mice and men go off Durai how true well mafia news though cuz I'm on a Greek ferry and I'm off here from Bari to Corfu in the morning just been thinking of some of those lovely dishes I've had in Italy I was thinking about in Sardinia that wild boar stew with potatoes so simple and so honest and good and in Sicily the the porcini mushrooms were the clams and the pasta down on the south coast that was something special and in Puglia that father bean puree the broad bean puree with a wild chicory so simple and so perfect but tomorrow hopefully we'll get a nice dawn of Corfu and I'll be thinking about some Greek food and those lovely stuffed vegetables you know though the peppers and tomatoes with a little flavor of the East in them but above all a great Greek salad they say traveling is a mind-expanding experience but I've never seen a group of girls dancing to the music from their mobile phones before where will it end I wonder next I'm in Corfu and trying some genuine Greek food hints on a healthy diet and then it's over to Majorca for tapas [Music]

Channel: BBC Documentary

Views: 861,031

Rating: 4.8607578 out of 5

Keywords: bbc documentary, documentary bbc, bbc, rick stein, rick stein full episodes, mediterranean food, rick stein chef, rick steins mediterranean escapes, cooking documentary, food documentary, sicily documentary, puglia documentary, bbc full documentary, bbc full episodes, Catania, Sausage, catania street food

Id: nNLmqQvYLAk

Length: 58min 52sec (3532 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 21 2019