In short. The primi of Puglia are built on semolina pasta made with water and no egg — orecchiette above all — and on vegetables, pulses and whatever the two seas give. Simple food, made properly.
If there is one shape that stands for this region it is the orecchiette: small ears of pasta dragged across a wooden board with a knife and turned over a thumb. They are still made by hand here, and you can watch it being done in the street.
What makes an Apulian first course
Durum wheat semolina, water, and time. No eggs — that is northern practice, and it makes a different pasta. The rough, porous surface that comes from semolina is what lets a sauce hold on, which is why so many Apulian dressings are little more than good oil, a vegetable and a hard cheese.
- Vegetables first — turnip tops, rocket, chicory, broad beans
- Pulses — chickpeas and beans, cooked with the pasta rather than beside it
- Sea when there is sea — mussels and clams, kept simple
Made by hand, and still made by hand
Orecchiette are not shaped by a machine. They are dragged across a wooden board with a knife and turned over a thumb, one at a time, and in Bari there is a street — via dell’Arco Basso — where women make them in the doorway and sell them from tables outside the house. It is not a display for visitors: it has been the work of that street for generations, though the visitors have certainly arrived.
The shapes are all variations on the same idea — a small piece of semolina dough pressed into a hollow that traps sauce. Orecchiette, cavatelli, strascinati, troccoli: each town has its own, and each is convinced its own is best.
Cooked together, not separately
The habit that most distinguishes Apulian first courses is that the pasta and the vegetable go into the same water. Turnip tops with the orecchiette, rocket with the cavatelli, broad beans with everything. The pasta takes on the flavour of the greens instead of sitting next to them, and one pot is washed instead of two — which was never a small consideration.
Why no egg, and why it matters. Egg pasta is a northern tradition made with soft wheat. Puglia grows durum, and semolina with water alone gives a rough, porous surface with real bite. That roughness is what lets three ingredients behave like a sauce — and it is why the same recipe made with egg pasta tastes wrong here.
The recipes
Orecchiette
- Home-made orecchiette — semolina, water, a knife and a thumb
- With turnip tops — the signature dish of Puglia
- With rocket — a spring dish from the Murgia
- With cacioricotta — the Apulian sheep’s cheese
- With ricotta forte — strong, fermented, unmistakable
- Mari e monti — shellfish, cuttlefish and rocket
- Cavatelli with rocket — the other Apulian shape
Pulses and grain
- Ciceri e tria — pasta and chickpeas, half of it fried
- Fave e cicoria — broad bean puree with wild chicory
- Pasta with white broad beans
- Cavatelli with wheat and beans
From the sea
- Spaghetti with mussels
- Tiella of rice, potatoes and mussels — the one-pot bake of Bari
Tomato, meat and the store cupboard
- Maccheroni with baked tomatoes
- Pasta timballo — the Sunday bake
- Penne of Saint John — anchovies, olives and capers
- Linguine with brindisina sauce
The whole collection is on the Apulian recipes page.
