Lecce

I spent about 48 hours in the Puglia town of Lecce from Thursday to Saturday. I liked it just fine.  But it didn't blow me away.  I think my reading had given me overly-great expectations about the architecture, etc.  Those aspects of Lecce did not live up to my hopes.  Part of this may be due to the ton of work being done on the main cathedral, which the books hype a lot.  There was a lot of scaffolding, for instance.

On the other hand, I liked their Duomo a lot.  The structure itself was not amazing.  But it's in a piazza that is humungous -- and, at least on the 3 days I saw it, surprisingly uncrowded.  This gives the space an incredibly cavernous feel.

All in all, I'm certainly not saying Lecce was bad.  I'd love to try Puglia again at some point.  I may not have done it right.

I will say that I loved the food.  There were two desserts in particular that I still can't get out of my mind.  One was the pasticciotto,which you can read about here (http://www.bridgepugliausa.it/articolo.asp?id_sez=1&id_cat=42&id_art=3479&lingua=en).  They look just like plain old rolls.  But, wow, so thick and moist and doughy -- oh, and there's some awesome cream inside too.  This is the quintessential Lecce pastry.

There was then this gelato concoction that I could not stop eating.  I had 3 of them in my 48 hours.  I could never get a straight answer out of the staff about what these were called (and I had plenty of opportunities.....).  One person said they were gelato with toast.  And, I suppose they were sort of like ice cream sandwiches.  But only in a remote sense.  There were chocolate and nutella versions, but I had the pistachio flavor each time.  I'm telling you: these rocked!

I also ate some regular food.  In fact, in both Matera and Lecce, I did a good job of eating the local cuisine.  In Lecce, as in Matera, they have what is often called "peasant food."  The literal term is "cucina povera" (cooking of the poor).  I loved it.  There were several pastas I had not seen anything like before.  Here was my favorite.  The noodles (called "maccheroncini") were long and extremely dense.  They were soaked with juicy flavor.  And there was carcioffi (artichokes) and pancetta.

Another local dish that sounds kinda simple, but was terrific, was this dish.  This was pureed fava beans with braised chicory.  This plate was clean in nanoseconds:

Another Pugliese classic that I have seen in any Italian resto in the US is cicero e tria.  This is pasta that is half fried and half boiled, along with chick peas.  Cool, right?

I also sampled the "primitivo"wine that I read about a lot in planning this trip.

I'm back in Rome for just over 48 hours now.  Then I have to get a Tuesday flight to Paris for a week.  I'm exhausted.  This is a tough gig.......