Minestra di Cicerchie — traditional Basilicata grass pea soup. The cicerchia, Lathyrus sativus, is one of the oldest cultivated legumes in the Mediterranean and one of the least fashionable. It is an irregular, angular seed, ivory to grey-brown, flattened on two sides as if it had been pressed — nothing like the tidy sphere of a chickpea. It grows where almost nothing else will: thin, stony, exhausted soils, no irrigation, drought years that would destroy a bean crop. In the

Orecchiette alla Materana traditional Matera-style orecchiette from Basilicata. Orecchiette are usually filed under Puglia, and the border does not care. Matera sits on the eastern edge of Basilicata, twenty minutes from the Apulian plain, and the two territories have shared durum wheat, hand-shaped pasta and a bread culture for centuries. What makes the Materana version its own dish is not the shape but the finish: it is drier, sharper and more austere than its Apulian cous

Pasta con i Peperoni Cruschi — traditional Basilicata pasta with crispy dried peppers. Pasta con i peperoni cruschi is the dish that explains Basilicata better than any guidebook. It is built on three ingredients that cost almost nothing and demand almost everything from the cook: dried sweet peppers from Senise, stale durum bread, and good olive oil. The peperone di Senise IGP is a thin-walled, low-moisture sweet pepper, not a chilli. It is harvested in August, threaded on l