This morning, we left our masseria near Brindisi and headed toward Lecce. Max picked us up saying in his best Hugh Grant accent: "Righty-tighty! Are you ready for another food spanking?"
On the way we stopped at a winery called Li Velli. Natalie showed us around the winery, which is different because they plant all of their vines in a hexagonal pattern like honeycomb. This way all of the vines get the benefit of the winds for pollination, etc. from any direction. Quite clever really.
We then sat down to have a sumptuous feast paired with all of the wines they produce. One of the dishes we had was a fried bread type arrangement like a bread donut with capers in it. Just delicious. We wiled away the whole afternoon there eating and drinking. Max was really getting stuck into it and started to get quite relaxed and animated with us. At one stage when he found out we were going to Verona, he said "Jolly good! You must go to the Verona arena. See anything, even if it's crap. The experience is THAT good! I would watch a dog licking it's balls in that place!" OK, we probably wouldn't book tickets to see a dog licking it's balls, but we will see what's on when we get to Verona.
After enjoying the best pannacotta we've ever had, we bought a few bottles of wine for the road and made our way to Lecce. Lecce is known as the Florence of the south, a city of about 100,000 people. The old town is mostly baroque buildings and has an ancient Roman coliseum. It is a very clean city. Most of the buildings are made from the local sandstone, which is quite light in colour and gives the city an open, clean look.
Lecce is famous for a small pastry called pasticiotto, which looks like a party pie, but is made from short crust almond pastry filled with custard. It is so delicious we stole some from the breakfast buffet each morning to eat during the day.
The next day Max took us to a cooking class. Our hosts, Gianna and Maya, were a mother and daughter team and were like a comedy duo. Their banter all day was hilarious. Maya was very outspoken and tried to run the class with Gianna inn the background telling her that she was doing everything wrong.
We started by walking to the fresh food market where we bought all of our ingredients for the day. We then went to their kitchen where we cooked up a feast. Gianna was a professional chef and training to be a sommelier, so naturally we cooked with wine. None of it in the food.
We made a lovely artichoke dish, pasta from scratch with a mushroom and tomato sauce, fresh focaccia from scratch (The Pugliese focaccia is to die for) and a pannacotta for dessert. Along with the various antipasti, like my favourite burrata cheese, ricotta and a poppy plant salad, we again rolled out of there.
After our lengthy lunch, we went on a walking tour of Lecce with Sabrina. Lecce is known as the city of 100 churches and there seems to be a sandstone, baroque church every 100 metres.
The next morning we said goodbye to Max and headed to the Brindisi airport to pick up a car for our road trip!