Through the Olive Branches . Theyre hard to avoid in puglia, a region thats home to 60 million olive trees. Thats one olive tree for every italian in italy. This region is italy at its most elemental simple fresh cuisine thats grown and produced here. Fragrant olive oil, beautiful vegetables, cheeses renowned the world over. Hello. Hello. One focaccia. And durum wheat for pasta and bread. Grazie. Look at that. Im stanley tucci. Im fascinated by my italian heritage, so im traveling across italy to discover how the food in each of this countrys 20 regions is as unique as the people and their past. You really want it to be like that . Need to be like this. Despite being such a fertile region, puglia is also one of italys poorest. It was nicknamed the shame of italy. Located in the south, a place the italians call il mezzogiorno, or high noon, because of the intensity of the midday sun, poverty and hardship are very much a recent memory in this part of the world. Get out of here. But today, puglia is coming into its own. Theres a newfound sense of pride for its gastronomic roots. Is this lung . Its a lung. And an appreciation for its rugged landscape. This is what farmers do, like caressing their children. So i want to find out how this region has seemingly gone from rags to riches. This is poverty and nobility. History in a bite. And turned its humblest ingredients into sources of national pride. Youre very smart, arent you . Thats it. Thats the story. Puglia is the heel of italys boot, a long, thin peninsula with more than 500 miles of coastline. Puglias capital, bari, sits perched on the eastern coast. Walking around the city, youre aware of two worlds colliding, a struggle between the way things have always been done, versus the delights, shall we say, of modern bureaucracy. A Major Trading post since roman times, bari has served as a gateway to greece, the middle east, and beyond. Port cities are notorious for hustlers and crime, and while bari may have seen its fair share of that, if you look a little closer, the city reveals its distinctive charm. Something author and guide Sophie Minchilli has a longstanding respect for. Hi, stanley. Hi, how are you . Good, how are you . Welcome to bari. Oh, thank you very much. Do you live here now or no . I dont live here, but my dad grew up in the building right behind you. In this one . He grew up there . Yeah. Really . My greatgrandparents were architects. They did the building and the whole seafront. Wow. Pretty cool. Yeah, that is pretty cool. Yeah. Im proud. Yes, youre very connected to the city. Yeah. Yeah, i am. Sophies first taking me to baris port to see one of the most ancient but not strictly legal barese institutions, the fishermen of molo san nicola. Its sort of semilegal, lets say, they dont really have a permit to sell fish. They sell it anyway. But nobody chases them away . No, theyve tried over the years, but they still stay strong. They stay. Yeah. In an industry thats increasingly regulated, these fishermen are determined to continue trading. Get out of here. They speak a strong borese dialect that even most italians would struggle to understand. Theyre competing with each other to sell a wide array of seafood to passersby. Ciao, ciao, ciao. Its really typical in bari to eat raw seafood in general. They call it the sushi of italy. The borese have been Eating Raw Seafood here as far back as the 1500s. Ciao. Here are the tagliatelle. Because theyre cut in thin strips. But theyre not obviously. They look like tagliatelle. But theyre not, obviously. But its octopus. Is it octopus . Its squid. Its squid . Yeah. To prep the squid, the fishermen beat it to tenderize it, then rock it in seawater to help retain its shape and texture. Its all fresh in here. You understand anything . Not at all. Its almost impossible. Its another language. It is another language. Yeah. Ready to try some . Yes. Oh, yes. Its delicious. I love it. A bit of lemon on top. If you want to go and eat it over there, youre doing us a favor. Oh, i think he wants us to go eat it over there. We cant eat it right here. Ah, grazie. Grazie. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Police tolerate the fishermen selling fish here. Just dont get seen eating it anywhere near them. You never know how many of them there will be, but theres always someone selling fish. Okay, lets try it. I mean, all right. So yeah, you just eat it. Chewy. Yeah, but its not that chewy. No, its not that bad. Its good, right . No, with the lemon. Yeah. Do you want more . Sure. Do i want more . If you like it. I do like it, actually. I didnt expect to like it. A few minutes walk from lungomare, and were in the old town of bari, bari vecchia. Its like a maze. The further you get into it, its all little alleyways like this and arches. Yeah. When i was a kid, it was actually considered sort of dangerous to come to the old part of bari. Oh, really . And now, i think this is one of the most beautiful roads in italy. Some 6,000 people form a tightknit community here, where the reality of life is in evidence everywhere you look. No separation. I mean, thats the space they have, and they make the most. Yeah. Their laundry is outside, but the underwear is always behind. Nobody sees it. Oh, really . Yeah. If you look, you notice, the underwear is always behind. Its about 2,000 years old, so it is really old. Its pretty old, yeah. The list of powers that have invaded bari is as long as your arm, and after centuries under siege, the borese could be forgiven for developing a certain disdain for whatever authority happened to replace the previous one. What did you say . Take a picture of me holding the beer. And now were walking through arco basso, which is also known as the orecchiette road. The orecchiette road, yeah. Because youll see theres a lot of women making orecchiette. With many of their husbands out at sea, the women were left to fend for themselves and provide for the family. Around the 1950s, they started making orecchiette, or little ears, to sell from their homes. But a few years ago, the council tried to stop their trade. For hygiene purposes, you cant really be making pasta out of your home and selling it to people or restaurants. But just like the fish market, they just kept going. Orecchiette, for these ladies, are a way of life. And while they cant sell to restaurants, they fought back and won the right to sell for personal use. Now they actually have a role in society. Theyre bringing money to the neighborhood. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Theyre working. The more time i spend here, the more i see that the borese are doing things their own way. A few minutes away, sophie wants to introduce me to a dish thats full of borese attitude. At urban bistro, chef Celso Laforgia makes a dish unique to the city, and one that youll find nowhere else in italy. Why is it called assassina . Because the ones who tried for the first time, he called the chef a killer. Oh, because it was so spicy. It was so spicy and burning. How do you make it . I can start . Yeah, go. Yeah. Okay. You start with olive oil. Yes. Chili. If you prefer more spice and more. Me, no. So we put that. Gently. The two things that you need to do it is a powerful fire and a big pot. Youre just putting in raw spaghetti. Yes. Pasta is basically never cooked this way. And then we put hot water and tomato sauce. Like a marinara sauce. Like a marinara sauce, yes. The trick is to burn it enough to make it crunchy, but not so much that its bitter. Oh my god. So it really is, you really want it to be like that. Yes, need to be. If you want to call it assassina. Celsos method goes against everything ive ever learned about cooking pasta, taking it dangerously close to complete incineration. And the key to knowing its ready . Use your ears. You need to start hearing the pasta, because you hear the noise that makes. It starts to crackle. That sizzling sound. You need to listen, because its telling you that its almost ready. The pasta is speaking to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Its ready. Lets try it. Its hot, spicy, buma. Its seared. Wow. Its not too spicy. No. Oh, now im getting it. A little bit. Just a little bit. Im sweating. Wow, thats really great. Thank you very much. Ive honestly, never seen anything like that before. I love that. And ive been around too. The assassina is a dish that could have only been created in a city like this. Like its people, its fiery, uncompromising, and it breaks all the rules. Passion fruit . As an expedia member, you can save up to 30 when you add a hotel to your flight. 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Something local chef pietro zito has developed a unique appreciation for it. This is what farmers do, like caressing their children. Were in the north, in the foggia province, known as the breadbasket of italy, because it produces more durum wheat than anywhere else in the country. But that wasnt always the case. Its soft. Yeah, its nice. Not the fiber this small part here. Its almost sweet. Like most people in this part of puglia, pietro zitos connection to wheat goes back to Benito Mussolinis reforms in the 1920s. There were the big landowners, then there were the Small Farmers who worked for the landowners. Yes. Mussolini carried out the first expatriation of land. He took from the rich and gave to the farmers. Mussolini thought selfsufficiency through increased Food Production was key to establishing italy as a world power. But in reality, what the farmers actually received were often inferior plots of land. Unconcerned, mussolini pushed ahead with his expansionist ambitions, and he took to the fields himself, displaying his wheatthreshing muscle in a bid to persuade italian farmers to persevere with the land they were given. In the end, mussolinis aspirations dragged italy and her people first into war, then into recession, with the poorest left to survive by scavenging for whatever they could find in the fields, even remnants of burnt wheat. And the wheat was harvested, the fields would be burned to clear the land. To prepare fields for the next seeding, any straw left over after harvest used to be cleared by burning it off. However, there were always kernels left on the ground which were not picked up properly. Yeah. So the poor people would collect these. And with this product . They made a poor kind of flour. Because it was burned, it didnt have much protein. But you could make bread with it. Very simple bread, dark bread. Dark bread . Yeah. The stigma of having to resort to such extremes would linger for decades. And this was something to be ashamed of . Shame, poverty, but it was also about survival. My dad had always eaten burned wheat, and now when i give him white bread, he is very happy. But pietro is on a mission to revive these simple flavors. Morning, nicola. And his friend, Nicola La Grasta has developed a modern technique for recreating it. The grain thats completely burned gets discarded. We only use what is toasted. Right, toasted, not burned. So half of it goes. Toasting the grain is a delicate yet laborintensive process. This is heavy. Its heavy. But it produces a dark flower, which can be used for making bread, as well as the puglian snack taralli, a kind of cross between a cracker and a breadstick. Taralli made with burned wheat. They have a strange color. Theyre really good. You can smell it. Theyre really good. The flour is used to make dark pasta, which pietro prepares for his restaurant antichi sapori, or ancient flavors, in the town of montegrosso, with the help of a local expert. This is my mother, concetta. Hi, concetta. Nice to meet you. Using a mixture of burnt and white grain to ensure the flavors not too bitter, concetta crafts each individual orecchiette by hand. Her kitchen days may be behind her, but she still has plenty of advice for the chefs. We would ask, how much water do we need . Shed reply, just enough. How much oil . Just enough. How much salt . No rules. My mom is exactly the same. Pietro is going to show me how he prepares his signature dish, Burnt Grain Orecchiette in a cream of fava beans topped with burrata and charred black olives. Fresh fava beans. Now we add some water. Then we add some onion. The sweet one, the white one. We wait until it starts to steam, then we blend everything. How long . Three minutes, because its freshly made pasta. Now well blend. And thats the beans for the dish. Can you add some olive oil while i blend . Me . Yes. Tell me when. Thats it. Thanks. Youre welcome. Look at this beautiful color. Oh, its beautiful. Fava beans are a favorite staple of puglia, but cooked with onions and blended with oil, they become smooth and creamy. And then well add orecchiette. Mix everything together. The color is spectacular. Here we have our orecchiette with fava beans. Then well add the bitter element, the olives. Then well add the sweet element, the burrata. And the most important part of the dish, the olive oil. Yeah. It creates a marriage of the flavors. Yeah. And thats it, a simple dish. Yeah. A simple dish with sweet and bitter parts. Fewer olives, its the bitter part. Oh, come on. Its the balance of the flavors. That is amazing. Yep, yep, yep. Oh my god, that is so good. Thank you. The ingredients are so simple. Very simple. And its also very quick. It took us three minutes. And from this region. Its fantastic. Its so unusual. Pietro has revived these flavors with such skill and affection that despite their humble origins, his dishes now hold their own as worldclass cuisine. Now, i cant stop. Theres a dignity to his approach, and if his packed restaurant is anything to go by, its welcomed by the whole community. Intelligent technology. Courageous performance. Discover a new world of possibilities in the allnew lexus rx. Never lose your edge. Living with Metastatic Breast Cancer means being relentless. Because every day matters. And having more of them is possible with verzenio. The only one of its kind proven to help you live significantly longer when taken with fulvestrant, regardless of menopause status. Verzenio fulvestrant is for hr , her2 Metastatic Breast Cancer that has progressed after hormone therapy. Diarrhea is common, may be severe, or cause dehydration or infection. At the first sign, call your doctor start an antidiarrheal and drink fluids. 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These little coneshaped clusters of houses tell you something about the people here. They were nearly always built in groups of four or five, so families could share not just the land, but things like wells and communal ovens. One of the main towns in the valle dei trulli is cisternino. Among its labyrinth of alleyways and whitewashed buildings, youll find puglians going for a passeggiata, the ageold tradition of taking a stroll. And if you follow your nose, chances are youll stumble across one of the many fornelli, like bere vecchie, run by you