My colleague Roger Fillion has been filling me in on the recent conference he attended at the Culinary Institute of America’s Greystone campus in California. The topic: street foods and comfort foods of the world. Here’s another of Roger’s notes about his trip.

I don’t ordinarily taste wines at 8:45 a.m. in the morning. But I did here. That kind of thing can happen when you attend a cooking demonstration at a CIA conference. Breakfast will never be the same.

I sampled all sorts of great cuisine from around the world. One of the highlights: delicious food and wine prepared by chefs from Apulia, an up-and-coming region in southeastern Italy. It’s a healthy cuisine highlighted by vegetables, legumes, and extra virgin olive oil. In other words, the food is a perfect example of the Mediterranean diet.

One of Apulia’s food ambassadors is Domenico Maggi, who charmed his audience as he extolled the food of his region at the CIA conference.

Apulia, I learned, produces more extra virgin olive oil than any other region in Italy. As you might imagine, Chef Maggi uses liberal amounts of EVOO when he cooks. The chef – who’s a lecturer at the catering college in the Italian town of Bari – also is an advocate of pairing different styles of extra virgin olive oil with food.

“If I prepare fish I would use a mild flavored extra virgin olive oil. But when preparing pulses – chickpeas, beans, lentils, etc. – and salads, I would use an intense flavored extra virgin olive oil,” he told me.

At the conference, Chef Maggi prepared a simple puree of fava beans and chicory. He uses dried fava beans, which are available year-round.

“Puree of fava beans and chicory is one of the most typical and traditional dishes of Apulia. And it has all the characteristics of the Mediterranean diet,” said Maggi, who runs a cooking school at the family farm where he grew up. The dish also is pure comfort food.

The cooked fava beans – which are simmered together with potatoes – are pureed in a food mill or sieve. The puree gets a liberal dose of extra virgin olive oil.

The chicory is cooked in boiling salted water. It’s combined with the puree. The dish is finished with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, croutons and, if you want, a thin slice or two of red onion.

Stay tuned for more of Roger’s reports.

Bon appétit,

Claude S. Weiller
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
California Olive Ranch

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