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Easter Dinner in Southern Italy

This Easter, Doctor Silvestro Silvestori has invited us to join him and his family in Lecce, Puglia for Easter Dinner. The owner of  The Awaiting Table cooking school, Silvestro teaches hungry travelers all about the traditional cuisine of the Salento peninsula in the Puglia region, aka the heel of the Italian boot. I came across The …

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Eating the Adriatic – The Last Stop: Traditional Foods of Puglia, Southern Italy

  Even though Italy has one of the highest obesity rates in Europe, the Mediterranean diet is alive and well in the southern Italian region of Puglia. Here traditional foods include fresh seafood, eggless pasta, and plenty of hearty, often foraged vegetables, such as chicory and wild artichokes. For the first time in all my …

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UNESCO Heritage Site: Historical Trulli of Alberobello, Italy

Visiting the Historical Trulli of Alberobello, Italy Icons of the Puglia region of Italy, the conical huts are known as Trulli, poke out everywhere in the region, but nowhere are they as numerous as in the city of Alberobello. The village was declared a UNESCO Heritage site in 1996. Demonstrating an architectural sense from another …

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The Flavors of Puglia’s Antipasti

Puglia’s Cuisine is seafood rich and fresh, and that includes Puglia’s antipasti. Ricotta-stuffed mozzarella, swordfish carpaccio, fresh ricotta wrapped with prosciutto and dribbled with balsamic, stuffed mussels, stewed sweet bell peppers, marinated octopus, and mushroom fonduta–the parade of antipasti seems endless when dining in Puglia restaurants. Commonly listed as Antipasto della Casa or simply Antipasti …

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The Gothic City of Otranto, Italy

  A coastal town on Italy’s Salento Peninsula, Otranto is a city out of a fairytale (in fact, the first Gothic novel ever written was inspired by Otranto’s castle), but the city also has elements of a tourist trap. Fortunately, the tourist-focused areas of the city can be easily bypassed with just a little know-how. …

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