Gino's Italy: Like Mamma Used to Make

Gino travels through Puglia's meat country: taking in the town of Cisternino and the Itria valley.

Ploughing through the heat on a push bike, he revels in his favourite kind of houses: trulli (stone conical shaped ancient homes) which are scattered across the landscape. Gino is shown the secret of how to make capocollo, a tasty cured meat unique to the area, before heading down to a local farm to lend a hand with the free range pigs. Stopping off at an olive producer, Gino uncovers some unusual products made from olive trees, including a beer. In the shadows of the trulli, Gino decides it's time for a BBQ, creating the local favourite, bombette (this region's tasty answer to British pigs in blankets).

Gino heads back to the Basilicata region, this time on horseback, to explore Pollino, the largest national park in Italy.

This region is the hilliest in Italy and one of the remote regions where Albanian refugees came to settle 500 years ago, fleeing their Ottoman oppressors. The hill village of San Paolo Albanese is the smallest in the whole of Basilicata and has almost been frozen in time. Here, the descendants of these refugees live in splendid isolation, keeping their culture and language alive through dance and song in their native tongue Arbëreshë. Gino meets the centenarian ladies of the village who introduce him to the local dried sweet and delicate red peppers, the Crusco, which only grow in this region - sweeter still when covered in chocolate. He learns to make Albanian rod-shaped pasta and hunts for the wild herbs that grow in the park. To top off his adventure, Gino cooks his mother's favourite - pasta with chickpeas, adding a tasty wild pesto and the sweet cruschi peppers.

Gino travels on his Vespa, further South along Puglia's heel to Salento, riding along its Adriatic coast to the port of San Foca. Here, he meets an Italian free-diving champion who still fishes with a spear underwater like the Ancient Greeks. Gino dives in, searching for sea bass for the dinner table. Back on his bike, he heads to the western Salento coast to learn about the secrets of organic farming in Salento's rich soil where giant onions grow alongside strawberries and the best low starch new potatoes are found. On the edge of a still and beautiful Ionian Sea, Gino cooks his spoils: pan fried sea bass with a new potato salad, which goes down with a splash!