Our Posti del Cuore | Altamura, the land of shepherds and bakers
Of an ancient osteria that celebrates Puglia's rich inland gastronomy
Welcome to our fresh new Cabinet of Curiosities, the source for your monthly food digest and discovery of all things curious about the world of Italian food culture!
This year, alongside the newsletters, you’ll find short Morsels of stories and insights on Instagram. Both the social Morsels and the newsletter will follow a monthly theme that has the purpose of focusing our narration and uncovering even more in-depth stories.
This month we’re doing things a little different. The La Panza Piena team members have decided to share one of their Posti del Cuore, places “of the heart”. Trattorie, specialty shops and food labs are amongst the collection, whose aim is to celebrate the hard work the people in each place do, and have been doing for generations.
Antica Osteria Pein Assutt
by Laís Zimmermann: cheese nerd and food history lover.
While Puglia may be famous for its beaches and rich seafood culture, that's not what you’ll find at Antica Osteria Pein Assutt. Instead, ff you dare to venture into Puglia’s countryside, you'll discover an uncontaminated land of shepherds and bakers. Its harsh arid landscape raises resilient people that preserve old traditions with pride, which is reflected in their cuisine centered on world-famous bread, legumes, foraged vegetables, and sheep and horse meat.
Walking through the door of this family run Osteria, you can't help but notice the owners joking with clients, whole families that fill the room and the comforting smell Antica Osteria describes as "food our clients can find in their own homes". Legend has it that some customers bring their own pot on Saturday night to take home some braciole al sugo for Sunday lunch.
I always seem to forget about the portion sizes and end up ordering too much food, yet never regret it. I recommend that you start with the horse meat carpaccio followed by a fava bean purée with wild cardoncelli mushrooms. Choose your handmade pasta shape, be it with foraged veggies, sugo di braciole or cicerchie - a legume known to grow even in the driest of fields.
If you still have space for a secondo, try the baked cardoncello, one of the most emblematic wild vegetables from the area. Of course, if you prefer a traditional secondo, you can never go wrong with horse braciole or, if in season, the pecora a cutturidd - a sheep meat stew slowly cooked for hours by using the residual heat from the wood fired ovens after the bakers are done for the day. Speaking of bread, don't forget to finish the meal by doing la scarpetta with a thick slice of Pane di Altamura.
Horse meat is really underrated.