Puglia Tag

Puglia tour including Alberobello

01 May AND WHAT DO TRULLI HAVE TO DO WITH TAXES?

Posted at 02:03h in Architecture, Destinations by Italian Tours

When people think of Puglia, one of the first images that springs to mind is a vision of quaint whitewashed, dome-roofed, round houses called trulli.

While the trulli architectural style dates back to pre-history, many believe that the passion for more modern trulli construction developed as an early and sophisticated means of tax avoidance. During the middle ages, landlords instructed the farmers to build the dry stones roofs of the trulli with a removable keystone in the middle and the walls without mortar. When the tax inspectors appeared the farmers would pull the keystone out, collapsing the building – thus allowing the landowners to avoid paying any taxes in what some would describe as an enduring Italian tradition!

The largest concentration of these pretty buildings is in Alberobello, but they are also common across the whole of the Valle d’Itria area, a region of farming and agriculture.  In their simplest form they are used as farming sheds and are dotted amongst the fields.

The town of Alberobello is undeniably a tourist magnet but with good reason and well worth a visit. The town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has hundreds of trulli, many of which are original.

Today the charming rounded shapes and conical stone roofs of the Pugliese trulli are so appealing that many of them are used as restaurants and visitor accommodation.

On our The Road Less Travelled tour of Puglia we not only visit Alberobello, but stay in a beautiful hotel in the Valle d’Itria, Masseria Fumarola, where some of our lucky guests get to sleep under these typical conical roofs!

We’re running our Puglia tour later this year in September and again in 2018:

  • 14 – 28 September 2017
  •  14 – 28 May 2018
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Orecchiette from Pugia

20 Jan RECIPE – ORECCHIETTE E PISELLI

Posted at 03:41h in Cooking by Italian Tours

One of the advantages of having our office at home is that Luca sometimes whips up a delicious lunch using what we have in the cupboard or fridge.
Today it was frozen peas and some lovely orecchiette!

  • 1 x onion – finely chopped
  • 1 x clove of garlic – halved
  • 250g frozen peas
  • 200ml vegetable stock
  • 180g orecchiette

Fry the onion and garlic very slowly in some olive oil for 5-10minutes
Add the frozen peas and vegetable stock and cook, covered over a very low heat
Cook the orecchiette in a large saucepan of salted water
As required add a little water from the pasta pot to the peas if they are drying out
Remove the garlic pieces (if you can find them!) and roughly mash some of the pea mixture with a potato masher or the back of wooden spoon
Cook the orecchiette for 5 minutes less than the recommended cooking time on the packet, remove it from the salted water with a slotted spoon and add to the pea mixture
Continue cooking the orecchiette in the pea mixture (adding some pasta cooking water as required, similar to how you would cook a risotto) until it is cooked to your liking – al dente I hope!
Remove from the heat, stir through some grated grana padano or parmigiano reggiano and serve

Buon appetito!

Visit bari in Puglia with this food tour
Small group tour to Bari Puglia

Orecchiette is a typical pasta from the Puglia region in southern Italy and still today, particularly in Bari, you can see groups of women sitting out on the narrow medieval streets hand-making the local specialty. The pasta dough is rolled out into a long snake, cut and flattened in one seamless movement whilst the women chat with each other and passers-by!

The name orecchiette basically means “little ears” and the pasta takes its name from its distinctive shape. Orecchiette, like much of the pasta from southern Italy, is made without eggs, using just flour and water.

Visit Puglia with Italian Tours in May 2017 or September 2017

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