Exploring Croatia ... Dubrovnik, Scampi buzara and Kamenice

This is the first of a series of posts on Croatia, starting with Dubrovnik - the scenery, the cities, and of course, the incredible food.

We arrived in Dubrovnik at 7am on the overnight ferry from Bari. If you are planning the same, there is a bus that runs from the port straight to the edge of the old town's city walls. We decided to walk, which was probably the wrong choice given the heat and the weight of our backpacks.

Dubrovnik itself is a cruise tripper's magnet. Between 9am and 4.30pm each day, the city is crawling with trails of tour guides, holding umbrellas and followed by a legion of sticker-toting day trippers.

That said, it's a beautiful and compact old city and one we explored every inch of on foot and by kayak (to get the best views of the city walls).

A glass of wine in the sunshine on the edge of the city walls

One of the things I found the hardest about Dubrovnik was finding truly local, good quality cuisine. Many of the restaurants in the old town offer hiked up 'tourist menus'. However, we found a real gem... Kamenice on one of the old squares (Gunduliceva Poljana).

This informal restaurant has a number of tables outside (none inside) and they are always packed with tourists and locals alike. They are renowned for their calamari, their black risotto with cuttlefish, their mussels and their 'scampi buzara' - a local speciality of langoustines with white wine, tomatoes, garlic and onions.

This is probably one of the best places you can eat in Dubrovnik - if you can get a table. Piles of steaming shellfish, fantastic atmosphere on one of the city's oldest squares, and an unexpectedly small bill at the end of your evening.

Patrolling for dropped shellfish at Kamenice

Next stop, Korcula.

The Deep South - Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria and 'cucina povera'

The food in this region of Southern Italy is often referred to as 'cucina poverta'.. literally 'poor man's food'.

Pasta made without eggs, bread made from hard durum wheat and greens gathered from the hedgerows. This is what makes Southern Italian food so welcoming, hearty and filling.

In the past few days we've eaten orecchiette pasta with wild horseradish in Matera - one of the oldest settlements in the world where the houses are built into caves; pureed fava beans and bitter chard in Alberobello - a village seemingly built for dwarfs where all the little white buildings have perfect conical stone roofs; and riso, patate e cozze (rice, potatoes and mussels, another classic regional dish) in Polignano a Mare - a town perched on the clifftops.

Matera - 46 degrees in the late afternoon. The cave dwellings are nice and cool though

Homemade pasta with wild horseradish (nose-burning!) at Le Botteghe in Matera

Polignano a Mare

riso, patate e cozze

 

Alberobello

Pureed fava beans with bitter chard and lashings of olive oil

Orecchiette with tomatoes and ricotta forte - strong, aged ricotta

The seafood in this region is of course outstanding too. And I ate a whole octopus in Bari.

One of the highlights of the trip through South Italy for me though has been stumbling across a side street in Bari where a team of old ladies were making fresh pasta outside their houses, to cater for the local restaurants. They were kind enough to let me take pictures - and get a few tips on technique as they proudly showed me how they made orecchiette by hand.

Next stop... Croatia...