Come late October, early November here in Puglia each year, your home phone starts to ring more and more. It will be Matteo or Claudia or Alessia, old Central and Northern Italian friends wondering how you're doing. They'll be chatty and generous in their interests, astonished that you have haven't see each other, in what, months, has it really been that long? They'll suggest that you really should get together and then arbitrarily suggest a date. But listen for it. It'll be anything but arbitrary.

But that's when you know: they're fishing for invites to San Martino, the best holiday of the year, the holiday the rest of Italy envies. 'Sure, Claudia', you'll say, 'there is always room for one more, it'll be great to see you'. You'll hang up and ring up Paolo and order another case of the new wine released just in time to mark the occasion. Maybe you'll make another call and check on the pig.'Put him on', you'll say, hoping to hear his growth as audible as human fingers across an over-inflated balloon. 'We're all counting on you Mr. Wiggles', you'll say to the series of jovial, stuffy snorts on the other end of the line

Like all cultural actives, to truly be able to understand them, you have to place them into context and San Martino in Puglia is no different. While it's true that there are some truly stellar second courses here in the Salento, it's certainly not a meat-based diet, not historically, and not even now.

Unlike la toscana, l'umbria, le marche and even l'abruzzo, THIS is what dieticians and doctors, researchers and cookbook authors are actually referring to when they sing the praises of The Mediterranean Diet. We eat a lot of fish, vegetables, pulses and grains down here, each at its peak, in quality and season. It just may be the best diet in the world, as healthy as it is delicious, as nourishing as it is intriguing and inspiring.

And so it really stands out when November 11th rolls around each year and folks celebrate by eating lots and lots of meat, even if 'eating' isn't exactly the right word. 'Devouring' is closer, especially if you can picture your grandmother tucking into plate of steaming meat tall enough that she has to keep her elbows horizontal just to cut into it. And imagine her drunk too. And certainly laughing.

At my place we usually make 10 kilos of fresh sausages from scratch (see recipe on website), jacking them with anisette until you can almost see the wispy vapors dancing over the giant ceramic bowls of ground meat. We'll roast a pork shoulder and occasionally the whole beast, cooked so slowly that we literally carve it with forks and spoons but never knives. We'll make some mashed potatoes and some broccoli raab, but they're there just to garnish the plate really or to clear the pallete between bits. We drink novello, Italy's answer to Beaujolais Nouveau, and we drink so much of it that we never bother to take the bottles of the box before hand, instead ripping them out of the boxes with a flourish, the swooshing sound of glass on cardboard always leading to the next round of cheers.

And anyone that knows me personally knows I'm not stingy with my food or wine and dinner for 6 at my place usually turns into 11, then 12 and onto 14, just about every night of the week. The last few years San Martino has caused me to push the boundaries of my dining room, my staff's patience, the perimeters of my oven and the wobbly hand-cart used to deliver the stacks of wine boxes to my place.

It was time to make a change.

On November 8, 2008, I've rented a castle ( see website for castle info) not far from Lecce to the throw the mother of all San Martino feasts. I've actually built a week around it, to make it worth it for you to come all the way to Puglia. Like San Martino itself, the week celebrates the onset of Autumn, with walking trips of the local olive groves, the first citrus fruits of the year and sweet roasting chestnuts so fresh from the fire you'll need to jostle them from hand to hand. We've arranged life local music. We're already aging the fire food. And when preordering the wine I've only told the producer, 'assai' (ask an Italian friend for an exact translation).

San Martino at The Awaiting Table. Come learn about Italy from the inside out.

Testo e fotografie Silvestro Silvestori, Lecce, Italia, 2007

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The Awaiting Table's Famous Twenty-Four Pork Shoulder with Red Wine Syrup.

Ask your butcher for a bone-in pork shoulder, the bigger the better (these will be the front shoulders, otherwise they'd be... you-know-what's). Take your sharpest knife, or better yet, a utility knife, sterilized over a flame, and score the skin into cross-hatching, until the top looks something like a tennis racket. Place under broiler until the top browns, radically. As brown ebbs into black, turn on oven to lowest setting and cook for 24 hours, or until the internal temperature is at least 80 Celsius. You're looking for beyond well-down. Pull from the oven half-hour before serving. Meanwhile, reduce 5 litres of red wine into a thick syrup, add a good pitch of salt and sugar at the end (always be careful when seasoning any liquid that will be reduced). You'll think I'm fibbing until you make this, but you can literally carve the meat with spoons. Dull ones too, if such a thing exists. You can also shred the meat with forks, in the Southern American style. Optional extras: add whole garlic cloves to the wine as it reduces and serve over the top. Sage goes well too, either adding the leaves to the syrup to reduce, or even just tearing them over the top, the old Ferran Adrià trick, where you're not flavouring the sauce so much as scenting the air around the table.

If you want to celebrate in the pugliese tradition, secure a case or two of novello, the new wine released just a few days before. Finish the meal with clementines and roasted chestnuts. If your spleen isn't making a high- pitched squeal when you stand up from the table, you've underdone it.

To find out more about San Martino, or any other course held at our little cooking school in Lecce,
simply click though to our calendar.
Silvestro Silvestori
The Awaiting Table