In some ways our trip around Puglia was conceived almost as an afterthought, an interesting way to get home from Greece rather than a destination in itself. In practice it hasn't worked out like that, the region has proven far more fascinating than we expected, to the point where I wonder when we look back on our travels in Autumn 2022 it will be Puglia's beautiful old towns that come to mind not the Ionian coast of Greece.
Gallipoli will be our final destination in Puglia, psychologically if not geographically the turning point of the trip where we sense from this point on we are heading home.
We stayed at Agricampeggio Torre Sabea, about 3km from Gallipoli's outskirts, it was on the coast with a good view of the old town and a westerly aspect, great for the inevitable sunset over the Med shots.
We chose to stay here because we figured it would be easy to cycle into Gallipoli. It wasn't.
Like Syracusa's 'Ortega' or Concarneau's 'Ville Clos' the ancient heart of Gallipoli occupies a fortified island. The streets of modern Gallipoli on the mainland are narrow, traffic choked and hazardous. Torre Sabea runs a regular shuttle bus, at €3 return it's a more stress free way to visit the town's historic centre than cycling there.
We were dropped off near the fish quay next to the bridge into the old town. It was just after 1pm so we needed to find lunch before exploring the the place. The narrow streets of the town were a bit of a maze, which one was the main one was unclear. We passed a big church and the Diocese museum advertising a Banksi exhibition, we decided this must be the main thoroughfare.
Nearby we came across a place Google maps described as a sandwich shop. To be fair that's also how it described itself - 'Maravija Paninotteria'.
I suppose in one respect the place did resemble 'Subway' in so far as the menu consisted of a list of ingredients, so you could design your own sandwich. However, the ingredients were top notch cheeses, cooked meats and a bewildering variety of Italian morsels.
Luckily to help puccia novices a few 'off the peg' classics were listed on the reverse of the pick and mix list. We went for the 'Malva', the most expensive puccia at €10, on the basis that if it cost that much it must be good, also it contained burrata which is always delicious. At this point it seemed pointless scrimping on the wine so we ordered two glasses of Prosecco.
When the puccia arrived they looked magnificent and substantial. Gill requested cutlery.
"No! No!" the waiter exclaimed, "burrata esplode."
He had a point, picking the thing up and sinking your teeth into it was really the only option. Nothing this simple should be as delicious as this, not just the squidgy delight of the burrata, but the complex sweet and savoury cured ham - Capacollo Ubriaco, a local Salentino speciality, lifted here and there with spots of onion jam, the effect was to turn a humble sandwich into a culinary triumph. Definitely the best puccia so far we agreed, difficult to imagine how it could be bettered.
Why is food in Italy so good? Firstly I think it is about demand. People are interested in what they eat, it's a topic of everyday conversation, like the weather or football. Three women sat down at the table beside us. Their conversation began with what they were going to choose, moved on to an animated discussion about what it was like when it arrived, considering each ingredient, and how the thing had been made and how they might have made it differently, When our waiter explained to Gill about the explosive potential of a burrata, the trio joined in, it was difficult to understand exactly what they were saying, but it made them very jolly, just reflecting upon the sensation of sinking their teeth into a squidgy dollop of creamy cheese.
So Italian cooks perform because they have a knowledgeable audience. Skill is celebrated and appreciates because everyone cooks, you find comparatively few convenience foods in a supermarket here.
Finally you can't have great food without first class ingredients. Every region of Italy has their specialities. So here in the Salento instead of the usual prosciutto, puccia often include capocollo, a local cured ham. However the description of our chosen 'Malva' on the menu was more specific, it contained Capocollo Ubriaco. It had a complex taste which I could not place. So I Googled it
'In the heart of Salento, Capocollo Ubriaco is born, a delicacy refined in the pomace of Negroamaro, a typical Salento grape. Francesca Mocavero is the architect of the project, today appreciated by many gourmand enthusiasts and awarded by the Bocconi University as an innovative product. The entry into the world of butchery of a woman producer, the only one mentioned in this guide, gives us hope for possible future female contributions in this all-male world. The capocollo, if well done as in this case, is already aromatic in itself, with the proportion of marcs it is enriched in aromas and gustatory complexity. The edge of the slice bears the indelible signs of the touch of Bacchus, a purple color and a red access to the heart with correct distribution of the infiltrated fat. The taste shines with a sweet - savory touch, it is enveloping and intense, the withered flowers and the fruity scratch recall some characteristics of the pomace in which it ages. This is how excellence is born from a waste. Recommended with Negroamaro Salentino.'
So the ham was cured in grape must, the tomatoes sun-dried, the rocket added a touch of spice and the onion jam used sparingly, made a suprise appearances here and there. This was not a simple sandwich, it had hidden depths, not over-priced at all at 10 euros. It is destined to become one of our 'food memories' as Gill calls our significant gastronomic moments.
What of the rest of Gallipoli? It is an interesting old port, and not for the first time on our trip to Puglia I was reminded of Spain, in this case the sense that Gallipoli is Cadiz's obscure Italian nephew.
Both have split personalities, an interior of narrow streets and confusing cul-de-sacs with a more open sunnier seafront lined by cream and white stuccoed houses.
The south eastern side has a lively urban beach overlooked by the restaurants and cocktail bars on the ramparts above it. We stopped for a coffee at Café del Mar, named after the more celebrated one in Ibiza because of the sunset views.
The terrace was lively, a popular spot on a Sunday afternoon for a post lunch cocktail. The staff were friendly. Studying the menu, we asked our waiter how to pronounce 'sfincione' which we had come across in Sicily, but seemed identical to the local pizza variant here, called Focaccia Barese. He was from Pakistan and couldn't help. He called over his colleague. She was Italian but she didn't know either. At this point the Australian woman sitting behind us arrived holding her phone which had an app that would pronounce any word you pointed it at. Despite all the effort we never did discover how to say 'sfincione' because we became sidetracked by the story she had to tell about how they came to be here.
She and her husband retired a few months ago, having sold their farm. It was located in the outback about 200 miles west of Brisbane. She was at pains to point out it was in a very remote spot. We could imagine, having spent a few nights in the Queensland bush at Undara National Park, definitely the least inhabited place we have ever been. She hadn't heard of it, but Queensland is very big and empty in a way it is difficult for a European to comprehend. In terms of area Queensland is a tad smaller than Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal combined. The combined population of these five countries is 266 million, the population of Queensland is 5.1 million.
So having spent their working lives in a very remote spot in an underpopulated region they decided to take a short break in Bali to celebrate their retirement. Their flight home got cancelled, so they did something remarkable. As our new Australian acquaintance put it. "We had always dreamed about travelling, so we booked a flight to Dubai instead of home, then we thought why stop here?" Almost five months later they were now sitting in a caféin Gallipoli, here for a week in-between house-sitting jobs. So far they had spent time in England, Scotland, a few days in Dublin and time in both France and Italy. Mixing holiday accommodation with house sitting jobs, as well as looking-up some of the European backpackers who had stayed on their farm, they had managed almost half a year of travel on a shoestring budget. It had taken them from some classic European destinations such as Tuscany to more obscure ones, such as Newark on Trent. I admired their pluck and spontaneity; it made our wanderlust seem very sedate indeed.
Over the course of the afternoon we walked around the old town's perimeter walls, though we had no particular plan to do so. On the side nearest to the mainland there is fish quay and an old market hall. It mainly sells tourist tat these days, but maybe in the morning there are some food stalls too judging by the boxes stacked on the Apé parked in front of it.
The smaller inshore boats moor elsewhere, in a small harbour near the café where we met the Australians. By now it was after four and the light became golden, the colours of the south ever more vivid making the mundane extraordinary...
fishing boats
church and hatchback.
even the gargantuan post-modern carbuncle on the opposite side of the harbour looked a tad less ghastly as the light took on an evening glow...
....and then there was the sea urchin sculpture
The shuttle pick up point was just beyond here, the campsite mini-bus waiting for us when we turned up at three minutes to five. Gallipoli in an afternoon, it's a beautiful place. Puglia has proved far more interesting than we anticipated, it's great when that happens.
Next day we decided to cycle along the coast road to the west. The area is famous for its white sand beaches and emerald seas, prompting local hotels and campsites to make ridiculous claims about looking like the Maldives. It's a lovely coast, but hardly a tropical paradise.
We found some of the supposed Maldivian coves, the brisk southerly breeze ensured they looked typically Mediterranean - a deep ultramarine, and that's good enough for us.
We have been unable to use our bikes much on this trip due to the tricky roads and haphazard driving both here and in Greece.
The minor roads west of Gallipoli were better than most, but not quiet. A warm sunny Sunday ensured the beaches were busy. We stopped at one of them on the way back. The countdown begins, I had a swim, probably my last dip in the Med this year.
Later on I took a stroll back to the coast opposite the Agricampeggio as the sun set. We'll get another glimpse of the Mediterranean if we stick with our plan to stay at Paestum on the way north, but there is no guarantee it will be as clear, so yet another sunset shot. I wasn't alone, a few fellow campers were with me, there is something compelling about watching the sun slowly slip over the horizon. Maybe the closest we can get to a 'pale blue dot' moment while still earthbound.
We've had a great couple of days in Gallipoli marred by one thing. Sadly the crunch in the title does not refer to our delicious puccia but this-
It was not until we were packing to leave that Gill noticed the horrible scrape and damaged seal at high up on the right hand side of the van. We can think of only one explanation. The site owners asked a some of us to move two days ago as they needed to clear half the site for the exclusive use by a German film crew. Consequently we were all squeezed into the remaining pitches, in our case in a row of three, parked parallel, sharing a tight exit route made even trickier by overhanging trees. We were the middle motorhome with a French camper behind us and a German one in front. Sometime yesterday morning while we were shopping the French van departed. Later that afternoon we heard another van manoeuvring into the space. We took no notice, in fact we didn't budge for hours in the midst of a series of thundery downpours, our first significant rain down weeks.
It was only when we came to move the next day that we saw the damage. It's fairly obvious what happened. While we were out shopping yesterday the French van must have clipped ours as they reversed out of their pitch, it is very tight. It is obvious from the shape and location of the scrape that their awning housing scraped the side of our van. The mark is below our awning because their camper was more compact than a coach built moho like ours. They must have heard and felt the impact and sustained some damage themselves. We were not around, so they just made off.
Very annoying! I've reported the damage to Aviva who have logged it as a potential claim. As there is no other party for the insurers to pursue liability will fall on us. There goes my no claims discount, affecting both the moho and the car probably. Ouch!
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