Salento cuisine is very tasty and flavoursome, even if based on simple ingredients locally produced (wheat, oil, wine, vegetables, legumes, fruit, fresh dairy products, in particular Ricotta, Mozzarella and Burrata), and all the products of the sea.

Fave e cicorie (Broad beans and chicory), Ciciri and tria (fresh pasta with chickpeas), Scurdjiata (sautéed vegetables, beans and fried bread), Pummitori scattarisciati (tomatoes sautéed in oil and stewed with spring onion, oregano and chilli), Pittule (small fried balls, bread dough base, plain or stuffed with onion and other ingredients), Pitta di patate (potato pie), Orecchiette (fresh durum wheat pasta) with turnip greens or leccese style (tomato sauce and grated strong ricotta cheese), then snails (“Municeddhe”) prepared in different ways, fish and seafood.

Only few meat dishes, in particular the Gnommareddhri (roulades cooked on the grill made with lamb entrails), and the Pezzetti di cavallo (horse meat stew), sausage and grilled meat.

Among the baked goods there are numerous types of homemade bread, the Puccia, a durum wheat small bread mixed with black olives (in recent years revisited in a larger format and stuffed like a sandwich), the Frisella (durum wheat loaf that is half cooked, then cut in half and cooked again in the oven to biscuit: it should be eaten by making it soften briefly in water and then seasoning it with chopped fresh tomato, oil and salt), the Rustico leccese, made of puff pastry and stuffed with bechamel, mozzarella, tomato and a pinch of pepper.

You cannot leave Salento without having tasted the Mustazzoli or Scaiozzi, soft biscuits with a very particular and intense flavor whose origins lie in the Arab domination, based on almonds, citrus, spices and chocolate and the Pasticciotto, a shortcrust pastry pie filled with custard and baked in the oven, perhaps accompanied by a Lecce coffee: cold espresso coffee with almond milk.

The almond is sovereign in all the Salento pastry, from biscuits to almond paste sweets (marzipan), to Cupeta, a typical crunchy almond which is a “must” in all religious Festivals in the country.

And finally the Spumone, a particular ice cream / semifreddo, usually with two different flavors, inside which hides a soft sponge cake drowned with amaro or Strega liqueur.