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The working recipe — the Market List, the Method, and where it lives or dies
I
Origin
Puglia
II
Description
Puglia's peasant bread soup — the simplest possible preparation: stale bread broken into pieces, added to boiling water or light broth with bitter wild greens (lampascioni, chicory, wild fennel tops), a generous pour of olive oil, and salt. The bread dissolves and thickens the liquid while the greens provide bitterness and freshness. Finished with raw olive oil poured at the table. 'Pancotto' (cooked bread) predates virtually every other bread recovery preparation and represents the essential Pugliese economy of ingredients: nothing is wasted.
III
The Thread
—Stale bread dissolved in hot liquid with olive oil as the flavour — both are the essential cucina povera bread recovery preparation of their region Portuguese
—Stale bread simmered in flavoured liquid to a thick porridge — Castilian version uses garlic-paprika; Pugliese uses bitter greens Spanish
—Stale bread softened in hot liquid as the base for a complete preparation — Lebanese adds yoghurt; Pugliese uses bitter greens and olive oil Lebanese
IV
Flavour Context
Stale bread thickness; bitter wild greens; pure olive oil richness; salt; the taste of radical simplicity and necessity
Pillars V — VII
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