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| Apulian customs and traditions |
It is my pleasure to tell you about Apulia, my home, which lies on the southeastern edge of the italian peninsula, a land at once barren and beautiful, bordered by the gentle Ionian Sea and the more lively Adriatic.
 I would also like to say something about the Apulians, a tenacious people dedicated to land and sea, trade and farming. We will travel along a path connecting aromas, flavors, and moods; from this journey I hope that you will gain an understanding of the southerner's soul.
Apulia (the name is latin) became a country in 1043. Today, its roughly 7740 square miles support a population of about four million. The landscape is variously flat, hilly, or -rarely- mountainous. Apulia's inhabitants are at one with the land, as are their customs and traditions. Apulian food is part of this union, and the safeguarding of certain culinary traditions here is as important as the conservation of the landscape, monuments, and works of art.
This barren region, particularly the hilly and farming areas, preserves its customs within the fissures of dry land and scorched rock and in the cracked surfaces of twisted trees beaten by the implacable north-west wind, which can bend even the indomitable olive tree in agony.
Olives and olive oil has always been the wealth of Apulia. The oil comes from a variety of producers all over the region, with many different levels of quality, the only common denominator being abundance.
The making of holy oil for the lamps used to give thanks for healing, and in the candles lit for souls in purgatory, has always accompanied the making of young, green, pungent olive oil, whose first pressing is welcomed with singing and dancing. Celebrations accompany the wheat harvest as well, when sheaves are tied together and placed under the arches of great rustic doors to bring fertility and prosperity to those living within.
 Oil and wheat, staples of this region, stand at the beginning and end of a long chain of indigenous foods that are genuine, simple, and sincere, as are the Apulian themselves. Here the oil is wedded with such products of the earth as eggplant, artichokes, sweet peppers, mushrooms, sweet onions, and tomatoes, giving life to the area's inhabitants while supplying the rest of the world with elements of the Mediterranean diet our forefathers discovered. |
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