Regional cuisine
Calitrian cuisine is renowned in the area for being very tasty and rather spicy. Typical hand-made pasta dishes include cingul', the local dish par excellence. This is short, twirly pasta boiled and then served with a thick, tasty tomato sauce; other varieties of pasta with the same sauce include lahan' and aurecchi' r' preut'- (priest’s ears in the local dialect); another must are cannazze', served with delicious hot tomato sauce and pecorino cheese; and sciliend' (a special vermicelli-like pasta) with a condiment of garlic-fried oil and hot chili pepper.
Meat-based delicacies include m'gliatiegghij' a local favourite made up of tasty roulades of kid or lamb casings garnished with cheese, offal, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper and sliced sausage; sfritta, or chopped pork meat sautéed with hot peppers; also sammuchij', a local pudding made of pork blood seasoned with minced lard, little segments of orange peel, rice, raisins, cinnamon, pork casings, walnuts, salt and chili pepper powder.
A traditional fish-based delicacy is stockfish a la ualanegna, the favourite of plowmen in the past (ualan' means plowman), in which stockfish is boiled and flavoured with garlic, herbs and chili peppers.
Looking into the past
It is ironical that in a town that was a considerable producer of durum wheat like Calitri, most of its people, because of their dire poverty, had to depend for their sustenance as a rule on maize and chick peas.
In the more distant past, only the fortunate few could afford wheat bread. The rest of the population, namely those who broke their backs with hard work and had callous hands, could afford this luxury only when they were with a foot in the grave (hence, even today in Calitri, the expression used to indicate that an individual is on death's doorstep is "he/she is at the whole-wheat bread stage".
Bread for the poor consisted of wheat flour mixed with ground chick peas and corn. Another basic food was corn pizza, cooked on heated stone slabs.
The most common food taken with bread was peppers, mostly of the hot variety. Condiments like fatback and lard were used very sparingly. Oil was used least of all because too expensive. The artisan class had their main meal at noon, while the farmers had theirs in the evening. Depending on the season, there could be a prevalence of small onions, then lettuce, chick peas, fresh peas, zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, turnips, cabbage and Savoy cabbage.
In all seasons, the food prepared most regularly was a soup of greens (m'nestra) consisting for the most part of wild greens, varieties of chicory and borage, all plentiful and inexpensive. Also widely used were dry legumes (mostly chick peas, lentils) and stockfish. When a hog was slaughtered, for days in a row people ate offal and giblets, and-because it could not be preserved for long-fresh pork.
On holidays a few glasses of wine were customary, whereas meat, whether poultry or lamb, was a luxury, and its use was limited to major holidays, mainly Christmas and Easter.
As late as the 1930s, the consumption of freshly-butchered meat was so scant that local butchers preferred to take turns slaughtering a few lambs. Beef sold at the butcher shops was mostly low-grade, derived from animals slaughtered because of injuries. Meat was grilled on a tripod (trebb't') placed over the fire.
