Here you will find some of our favourite Puglia Kitchen recipes, plus some of the other dishes from Italy that we cook regularly in our Puglia Kitchen.
Are we purists, hung up on ‘authentic’ recipes? Maybe. Sometimes. While we have yet to embrace Italian American cooking, with its carbonara and cream, mac(aroni) and cheese and chicken Alfredo, we sometimes come close. We don’t do spaghetti and meatballs like they do in the US, but we do serve our more modestly sized polpette meatballs in a sugò with pasta that might sometimes be spaghetti (though it will more likely be orecchiette).
Yet cooking is about change and evolution. In the Americas tomatoes were being eaten long before they were introduced to Europe. They came to the kingdom of Naples via Spain, as pomi d’oro (golden apples) and in the first Neapolitan cookbooks are suggested as ‘Salsa di Pomadoro, alla Spagnuola’. At a time when pasta was usually vermicelli and cooked for as much as two hours, previously dressed only with some butter and much cheese. Even when this over cooked pasta was first dressed with tomato, it was as a watery broth.
There is a risk of romanticising our attachment to Puglia’s regional cuisine. The image of Puglia as a rural world where peasants lived off the produce they could scrape together is not within our lived experience. We must look to the recipes, access to food and the historical facts of hardships, raiders and invaders and social conditions (such as the lack of water for crop cultivation) to put Puglia’s food history in context.
But we can, with certainty and clarity, speak to the seasonality and full flavour of the ingredients we use to cook with in the Puglia Kitchen. Because that’s not our history. It’s our present.
Behind our Puglia Kitchen recipes
Ours is a story of seasons, of the land and sea. Of the senses, tastes and colours. White villages perched on hilltops, copper-red earth, verdant green olive groves and blue sea extending into the horizon. We are Italy’s top olive oil producer, accounting for almost 40% of Italian olive oil. Puglia is the breadbasket of Italy. Our region is Italy’s second top regional wine producer known for its robust reds. And Puglia gave the world burrata.
Puglia’s tradition of la cucina povera (“peasant food”) serves up simple but inventive dishes using seasonal, locally produced, fresh and flavourful ingredients. Most dishes use only a few elements and very little goes to waste. Humble and frugal, the end result is much more than the sum of its parts.
Trade with bordering regions and countries and recurrent invasions left their culinary influences. As part of the Kingdom of Naples wealthy landowners and nobles stripped out the produce – and profit – from their Puglia estates preferring to live and feast in the more cosmopolitan capital, Naples. Back home the farmers and fishermen, the plain and the poor, learned to make the most of what the land and sea provided. There were no elaborate dishes or extravagant banquets, only the resourceful and frugal use of the region’s raw materials.
Puglians were even referred to as mangiafolia – “leaf eaters” – for their consumption of leafy greens and vegetables, borne of necessity rather than love for the produce. Yet, as old traditions are celebrated these are recipes that have become loved. Not only because they are wrapped in nostalgia and memory: in an age of ultra processed fast foods, these are recognised as healthy and hearty dishes made from delicious, seasonal and sustainable ingredients.
About our Puglia Kitchen recipes
Italy is a country with a hundred cuisines and thousands of recipes. Provincial loyalties account for a huge variety of gastronomic traditions across the country. Taste is a product of geography and climate (and history). Dishes are shaped by the seasonality of produce. Recipes change according to location (and over time). The preparation of a particular dish can vary from region to region, even from town to town, and certainly from family to family.
Our Puglia Kitchen recipes typify our region’s heritage and traditions. It makes sense that what we cook depends on the time of year. We spend hot summer days on the beach rather than labouring for hours over a steamy kitchen stove. Light, easy eating suits our mood and the weather. Long, lazy lunches in the shade with family and friends: fresh pasta with a quick tomato sauce, linguine with vongole. But as Autumn draws in and eventually becomes winter we turn to the warmth of the kitchen for comforting food. Riso, patate and cozze (rice, potatoes and mussels), ceceri e tria (chickpeas and fried pasta), parmigiana di melanzane (aubergine parmigiana bake).
But more importantly we cook with whatever is available from the daily market: local in-season produce. Rather than shop with a recipe in mind, we figure out what to cook from what we can buy.
Index of Puglia Kitchen recipes
We have split our recipes according to starters, pasta dishes, main dishes, sides and desserts. We have also indicated the seasonality of our recipes when relevant.
Remember that cooking them is only part of the story. Food is about community and conviviality. And that’s why pasta is at the heart of our table. It can be prepared easily and served in large bowls to share at the table.
The Puglia Kitchen recipes
Antipasti
Primi
Rigatoni alle zucchine | Rigatoni pasta with courgette
Seasonal summer cooking using courgette grown at home or bought from the morning market.
Spaghetti all’assassina
Killer spaghetti from Bari, Puglia’s regional capital. Various collected recipes including the “official” recipe from the Accademia dell’Assassina, and the story of the dish famous for cooking spaghetti like you’ve never cooked it before!
Secondi
Dolci
The rest
Sugo al pomodoro | Tomato sauce
Classic and authentic tomato sauces for pasta. From a quick sugo to preserved tomato sauces for the store cupboard. Including pomodori scattarisciati, Puglia’s famous popping tomatoes.
Wine Notes for our Puglia Kitchen recipes
Puglia is a powerhouse of Italian wine, second only to Veneto in production. Our robust reds have deep roots in history—dating back to antiquity. Pliny the Elder chronicled the region’s iconic grape varieties: Malvasia Nera, Negroamaro, and Uva di Troia. The Crusaders toasted at Brindisi’s inns before setting off to the East, while Taranto’s rock-hewn cellars stored vast quantities of wine destined for faraway lands.
As recently as 30 years ago Puglia’s wines were considered appropriate for blending to enrich northern Italian wines. Nowadays our vineyards are celebrated for their distinct character, revealing a heritage of flavours and knowledge with the focus on quality and native varieties capturing the essence of Puglia’s sun-soaked landscape. From the fertile plains of Murgia to the coastal vineyards of Salento, Puglia’s wines reflect a deep-rooted connection to the land.
- Nero di Troia from Daunia and Murgia produces elegant, complex reds, with delicate hints of violet and liquorice.
- Primitivo, flourishing between Gioia del Colle and Manduria, offers intense, full-bodied wines rich with notes of cherry and ripe fruit.
- Negroamaro, ubiquitous in Salento, delivers a rustic and earthy character, often blended with Malvasia Nera or Susumaniello to create softer, more nuanced flavors.