Do you keep a travel log when you take a trip? Especially if I’m abroad I do. I just kept a short running commentary of notes about what I did each day and what I had to eat.
At the Masseria Cervarolo, we enjoyed two wonderful dinners; multi-course gastronomic enjoyment. I can’t tell you exactly what I ate, and some of the photos were way too dark to enhance.
But, what I am going to tell you about is fava beans. I can recall, growing up, at Italian festivals in Rhode Island. I lived there from about age 14-16, and I ate some marinated fava beans. The kind that you squeeze between your thumb and forefinger and out pops a nice big kernel of bean. It was good. But here in California I almost never see jars of fava beans. You can buy plain, canned fava beans, though. I don’t believe
I’ve ever seen fresh fava beans.
So, enter Puglia in the picture, and fava beans played a very frequent dinner role. We had fava beans multiple times while we were there. And what they do with them is cook them and puree them into a kind of mashed potato consistency. I suspect they add garlic, seasonings (although only once did we see anything like herbs in the puree), some broth or water and most likely some amount of olive oil. And then they cook some kind of bitter greens to put on top. I did find a recipe online that looks much like the dishes we had in Puglia. It seems that this fava bean dish with cooked chicory is unique to Puglia. I think (someone correct me if I’m wrong) that when fresh, fava beans are very green – so I think this was dried 
fava beans, which turn a light brown once they’ve dried and hardened up. For certain it was chicory season, so that may be why we had it so often.
At right is a photo of the first one we were served. And I wrote escarole on the photo, but I think it was chicory (same family). They drizzled a bit of olive oil on top. For awhile we didn’t know what that mound of puree was – we thought mashed potatoes until we tasted it. Definitely not potatoes. Finally one of the waitresses explained about fava beans.
We all cleaned our plates it was SO good.
The next day we ventured out to a city 20-30 miles away and our group went on a walking tour. I decided not to do that only because I was concerned about overdoing it with my foot. After their tour they came and got me and we had lunch out at a trattoria a few blocks away. 
We ordered fresh grilled vegetables, which were plentiful in nearly all the trattorias. I couldn’t get enough of them. They prepared eggplant, peppers, onions, leeks, zucchini, tomatoes, sometimes mushrooms, sometimes sun dried tomatoes, all grilled and drizzled with olive oil. And guess what? They brought us a plate of fava bean puree that was done just slightly differently. This one was more chunky (see left). Still chicory on top, but they served it with garlic croutons on top. We also had a platter of salami (salume or salumi in Italian) and cheeses too. We couldn’t believe it when we were done – we’d eaten nearly everything they brought out. All with lots of bread. 
Bread is the staff of life, and there’s no doubt in my mind that I ate more bread in those 3 weeks than I’ve eaten in the last year. It was so fresh, so yeasty, so tasty. None of us could stop eating it.
There at right was a small basket of bread with the little snail-things in the middle. Those are a frequent cracker. I can’t remember what they call them – snails, shells, or worms, or something like that. We ate those too. They’re crispy like crackers. The grilled breads were the best, by far. And a bottle of olive oil was nearby so you could drizzle some on top. No butter.
Here is yet another fava bean dish. This one had a mound of it in the center of the plate, but then they’d made a sauce with onions, I think, garlic, garbanzo beans, mushrooms and some little flat pieces of pasta. All that poured over the puree of fava beans you can seein the middle. It was absolutely scrumptious, and I had to talk to myself out of eating the entire plate. This was one of the courses at the Masseria.
Here again, at right, is another fava bean dish with a piece of mushroom plunked on top, and 4 lovely mounds of greens around the outside. This one wasn’t my favorite – the puree was too thick. I ate all the greens, though, and they were good.
As in many places, it’s hard to get enough vegetables when you’re eating out all the time. At the Masseria, 
we did have a course of grilled vegetables. Picture at left. We had eggplant, zucchini, leeks and chanterelles. It was really delicious and since we all knew we weren’t getting enough veggies, we ate most of it. Yet we knew we had several more courses to come.
More than once we ordered caprese sandwiches – they’re very inexpensive and almost always the trattoria served them with a bowl of local olives. It was fresh mozzarella, always, and slices of fresh tomato, all very tasty and ripe, and a drizzle of olive oil and maybe a slice or two of fresh basil leaves, or sprinkled with some dried Italian herbs.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a fan of gnocchi. Well, at the Masseria one of the courses was gnocchi, and I looked at the plate, thought “oh dear.” I didn’t want to not eat it at all, so I thought I’d pick at it, move it around on the plate as children do, but I did take one gnocchi. OMGosh. This was unlike any gnocchi I’ve ever had. All I can tell you is they tasted like little pillows of pasta softness. They were absolutely fantastic. The peas and tomatoes along with it was a perfect pairing. I ate most of it. I’ve never had gnocchi that were so good.
On occasion in the mid-
afternoon we’d all have a craving for a little something – maybe a gelato, as you can see in the photo at left of Lauren with a double scoop. She fell in love with gelato (doesn’t everyone?). That particular day Lauren was the only one who had room for any as we’d just had a big lunch. 
One day I craved an espresso, so at the Masseria they had a lovely espresso machine and I made myself one and dipped into the jar of cantucci (little cookies) that Italians like to accompany an espresso.
If you’ve ever watched Italians standing at an espresso bar – most of them are stand-up only at a tall counter – it’s just a place to get an espresso, throw it down and leave. First they pick up the sugar dispenser (no packets, this is the real thing, a big glass jar with a special spout) and they pour in about 1/4 CUP of sugar, stir it around and down it in one big gulp. 
At the Masseria, they offered a huge table of breakfast food, full of cold cuts, salami, a daily frittata (room temp), hard boiled eggs,
several fresh breads and jams, fresh mozzarella, fresh tomatoes, fresh ricotta cheese, the wonderful cornetto (Italian croissants) and at least 2 dessert cakes. When I asked for a latte, they always brought it in a tall glass. It was lovely. If we’d really eaten our fill, we could have gone from breakfast until dinner without additional food, but we never did! We 
always needed more food around 1:00 or so.
There’s my breakfast plate at left – from the top: tomato, ricotta, ham, mozzarella, frittata and then a slice of the lemon layer cake topped with powdered sugar. On another plate I cut fresh bread and had a croissant. So much food. Way too much food!
I have more food pictures but I think this post is long enough. Hope you haven’t been bored. . .
hddonna
said on April 28th, 2015:
Bored? Not a chance! Now I’m wanting to head for Global foods to pick up a package of fava beans, grill a big batch of vegetables, make some fresh ricotta…I did buy whole milk this week for the express purpose of making some ricotta, so maybe that’s where I’ll start. I love hearing about your food adventures!
Thank you, Donna! Appreciate your comment. See if you can find some fresh chicory??? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it, have you?. . .carolyn t
hddonna
said on April 28th, 2015:
I don’t believe I have seen chicory, but Global Foods has quite a large selection of greens. It would be interesting to see if they carry it.
hddonna
said on April 28th, 2015:
Guess what? I’m sure you have seen it, and so have I. I just learned that there are two salad versions of chicory, “the narrow leafed version is also called curly endive, and the broad leafed variety is also known as escarole.” (wisegeek.org) Does that jive with what you had in Puglia?
Well, somebody on the trip said that chicory was in the same family as escarole. It definitely was NOT curly endive, though. It was very dark green with more green leaf part than curly endive offers. So maybe chicory (the green leafed type) IS the same as escarole – that is in my markets sometimes. Thanks for the sleuthing. . . carolyn t
Toffeeapple
said on May 1st, 2015:
Not boring at all. I was amazed at how many vegetable dishes you had, very unusual for Italy. Fava beans or, as we call them, broad beans are bright green, right inside, see here:
http://www.waitrose.com/home/recipes/step_by_step/how_to_double_pod_broad_beans.html
I love it when the new seasons crop comes in; if you grow them you can eat the whole thing, pods and beans together when they are very young. Not long to go now and asparagus isn’t far behind!
We had asparagus in Italy and in France. Oh yes, in Switzerland also. It was just great. And they’re available in profusion here in California at our markets right now. I didn’t know fava were the same as broad beans. I’ll have to look and see if we have them by that name here. . . carolyn t