Lucania cooking

Lucania cooking

Lucania opens up its territories, its valleys where the rivers flows slowly as if they were of powder
- Leonardo Sinigalli, LUCANIA - The Basilicata region is a mainly mountainous area with very little plains among which the most wide is the Metaponto plain.
The Romans called this region Lucania, this is a term that derives from Lucani, an ancient people (its meaning is linked to lucus that means wood).
The landscape is rough, rural, ancient and still in time; there lives a simple, warm, available and joyful people.
The Basilicata cooking finds its origin in the simple customs of its people, who have had to adapt itself to a country which is surely not rich of natural resources.
On the basis of the Lucania gastronomy there are agriculture and breeding influenced by Campania, Puglia and Calabria traditions.
Foods are genuine, they have an ancient flavour that has remained unchanged. The most popular seasoning is the olive oil while butter is rarely used.
The sausages of this territory are extraordinary and they have always been appreciated since ancient times. Verrone tells that ancient Romans learnt how to produce sausages from Lucania people. There dominates the pork meat. In the Lucania cooking you will find a mix of traditions and history and this lead to the production of dishes that are unchanged and that are realized with the same ability of the past.
An other leading character of the Lucania cooking is played by chilly pepper that has three names in this country: diavulicchiu, frangisello, cerasela.
The chilly pepper is used to prepare wonderful dishes that in the past was called 'the peasant's lunch' since it constituted the main element of their poor diet.