Buono Appetito!

Kishore and Smita Iyengar

Winter is the ideal season to experience Italy and the southern region of Puglia on the Adriatic is bracingly cheerful. Sauntering through the quaint, narrow by-lanes presents a homely atmosphere greeting you with casual quietude.

Fat matronly women chat up their weekly gossip, deftly chipping off thumbnail pieces off long, thick ropes of flour. That’s the fabled Puglian Orichiette pasta, spiced up with pepperoni, thyme and salt. Try savouring this delicacy for dinner at a nearby Osteria, the feather-soft Orichiette is irresistible, soaked in basil-tomato puree and fresh extra virgin olive oil. The flavours work magic on the palette!

Drive up the hills to Locorotondo and the fairytale Unesco World Heritage town of Alberobello. Conical gray stone slatted rooftops greet you up the colourful streets full of local boutiques. Look out for the scrumptious local specialty — Taralli.

Flour mixed with wine, black pepper, garlic and fennel juxtapose to become an anytime crunch snack that you won’t just lay your hands off… wash it down with vintage Mandurian Primitivo Puglian red wine.

The quaint Ristorante La Greppia del Grate in Locorotondo offers diners Puglian delights like fresh cauliflower and carrot soup and pan-stirred zucchini and gamberi (prawns) with white basil Pecorino cheese sauce, extra virgin olive oil. Olive oil is culinary leitmotif to Italy, what turmeric is to India.

Toscana in eastern Italy offers unbeatable gastronomic capers. In the very heart of capital Florence dig into hearty face-sized slabs of homemade chocolates by Roberto Antinori, tinged with nectar-sweet Vinsanto — the local dessert wine. Italian cuisine is married inextricably with great wines and the combo heightens the glory of regional flavours. At medieval hilltop town Cortona with its fabled Osteria del Teatro celebrated for the ‘world’s fastest wine bottle-opening waiter’, crisply sautéed Porcini mushrooms in black pepper and chilli flakes-flavoured olive oil and fillet of mackerel is truly uplifting.

At an altitude of 3500 feet within the ice cool cavernous confines of the world famous, millennia-old Carrara marble mountains, a bespoke, wine-n-dine experience like none other awaits you. Grilled gamberi and scallops in asparagus dil sauce, spiced up with white wine-fermented country mountain cheese and black olives accompany boutique winemaker Pierrepaolo Lorieri’s fabulous signature Vermentino white and red limited edition Lorieri wines.

At the quaint art deco town of Pietrasanta near the Tuscan Riviera, spend a lazy lunch time relishing local flavours with a contemporary touch at the chic Ristorante Enoteca Marcucci. Your tastebuds will waltz with a fine red vintage Super Tuscan vintage wine Desiderio 2001 by Avignonesi Vino Nobile de Montepulciano and a platter of delicious local cheese — Formaggi with fresh Toscana olives, shallots-sauteed crisp aubergine with parsley and cinnamon dust.

The earthy, variegated platter of Italy undeniably leaves an unforgettable epicurean nostalgia on your senses. Arrivederci!