Posted by Keeper Collection
For the past couple of weeks we’ve been eating good food, drinking good wine, and having a GOOD time. The Keeper team just got home from Italy and we have so much to share. We decided that we wanted to divide and conquer the country – North, South, East, and West – to find the freshest foods and best Italian cooking.
Arming ourselves with online cookbooks such as Chef David Bull’s, Bull’s Eye on Food and the Wine and Food Foundation’s Plate and Vine, we were fully prepared to cook some of our favorite recipes in Italy – ya know, just practicing for when we live out our fantasy of traveling when we retire to Italy to spend the rest of our days cooking divine meals and indulging in beautiful Italian wine at sunset in a quaint (yet spectacular) Italian Villa! Part of our team took on the northwest side of Italy, tasting foods in the Italian Riviera and slipping into France. The other part of the team traveled to Northern and Southern Italy and even snuck on over to Innsbruck, Austria. Life’s rough, huh?
When planning the trip, we enlisted the help of our friends at Southern Visions, travel planning professionals specializing in active and cultural vacations in Southern Italy. We asked them to take us to parts of Italy where we could find the freshest foods and learn the most from a culinary perspective.
Let’s just say, they didn’t let us down and kept us on a southern Italian high – or should I say a “SoIt” high? Why not – If Austinites can claim SoCo for South Congress we can claim SoIt – just wait, it’s gonna catch on! Southern Visions (no, I won’t say SoVis, I know my limits) possesses in-depth local knowledge of the culture of SoIt, which made our trip reach beyond touristy travels of Europe. Or maybe we loved our Southern Visions professionals more than expected because their first priority was to keep our appetites satisfied – the most direct way to our hearts!
Our trip began in the medieval coastal town of Monopoli located near Bari, home to about 50,000 Italians. Located on the western shores of the Adriatic Sea, Monopoli’s beautiful water and yummy seafood took our breath away! It’s an excellent place to visit for a foodie because of its rich agricultural industry and fresh seafood. We stayed in a small apartment overlooking the water – quite the view, to say the least.
Benvenuti a Monopoli!!!
Michael and his business partner, Antonello, Southern Visions founders, led us around Monopoli and showed us a magnificent time. We weren’t about to let a little jetlag slow us down, so Michael knew just the trick – straight to lunch! Our first meal in SoIt was at a picturesque local café called Osteria Perrici.
We enjoyed dish after dish of authentic Italian family-style cooking, all fresh and local to the area. We started with a local white wine, which was light and fruity, but not overly so. This went well with the start of our meal, tomato bruschetta soaked in olive oil. By the time I could take a picture, all had been devoured except for my piece (it’s every man for himself with this crowd)! A perfect traditional start to an Italian meal.
After this, we were drooling at the antipasti –
The freshness of the seafood was striking. Lightly cooked octopus, steamed clams, fried sardines, fritters laced with fish flakes, sun-dried tomatoes, calamari crudo, anchovies in lemon and oil…. what more could a foodie ask for? 7 dishes of pure indulgence later, it was time to wrap things up, right? WRONG…that would be sooo not SoIt of us. Here comes the second course…
Spaghetti al cernia with chunks of fish in a tomato sauce
Cavatelli Cozze e Vongole filled with clams in a garlic based broth
The second course, or Primi, consisted of these two seafood pastas with pepperoncini on the side. The pepperoncini added a nice zing to the dishes. Siding dishes with pepperoncini is common in SoIt, because they are known to add a desired spice to pasta sauces. They are also often served alongside other pickled vegetables in an antipasto. Osteria chefs have to walk only a few hundred meters to the dock to get the fish that they serve daily, like those in our Spaghetti course. The garlic broth of our Cavatelli Cozze dish really enhanced the flavor of the clams. By this point, we were ready to throw in the towel…UNTIL this arrived on our table. Magically, we found room for more!
Frito Misto - Shrimp, Octopus, Calamari
The Frito Misto was fabulous, including shrimp, octopus, and calamari – all seasoned and cooked to perfection. In a short time, our plates were wiped clean. Full beyond belief, this meal proved to be the perfect start to our trip! We headed back to our apartment to get some shuteye, and we were left to dream of our morning choice of either Cappucino or Espresso.
The next day (after getting our cup of caffeine goodness at Caffe Roma), we couldn’t wait to jump right in and cook some food of our own. We headed to the market to browse all the fresh ingredients that Monopoli had to offer.
Keep an eye out for future posts about the Monopoli market, our own Italian cooking efforts, and our continued travels as “Keeper Conquers Italy!”
