In Puglia--the heel of the boot—time stands still, and the local cuisine is rich with classic

pasta dishes brimming with seafood and hearty, flavorful vegetables and beans.

The windswept plains of Puglia, the heel of the boot of Italy, are so rich that fertilizers are hardly necessary. For millennia, this region was Italy's breadbasket, growing fine hard-durum wheat, and it still produces much of the country's best dried pasta. Today, olives, another ancient crop, have taken over as Puglia’s chief gift to the world. More olive oil, sweet and mouth-coating, is produced here than in any other part of Italy. Puglia's vegetables, stingily watered with what little rain the plains attract, must work hard to survive, and the effort pays off in the most intensely flavored produce anywhere. And, with the Adriatic Sea to the east and the Ionian Sea to the west, the region produces abundant seafood that is famous throughout the country.

As a result of these riches, locals and visitors alike feast on a seemingly end-less range of rustic, regional dishes.

Vegetable stews, like scaffata, which just melds the sweet flavors of spring artichokes, fresh fava beans and new peas, still take pride of place on a Puglia table, and dishes like these often are served in lieu of meat. At Al Fornello da Ricci, perhaps Puglia's best restaurant, proprietor Dora Ricci sends out course after course of pasta, beans and vegetables, and diners never even wonder what's missing.

Few could resist the fat purple beets Ricci coats with a delicate batter and fries in olive oil, garnished with fresh mint to accentuate their sweetness and play off the touch of hot red pepper in the batter. And who would want meat when there are cavatelli, the chewy little pasta shaped like puffed wheat, combined with garlic, white beans and plump, juicy mussels? Or huge wood-fired loaves of naturally leavened bread and handmade orrechiette ("little ears") pasta complemented by bitter greens, garlic, a bit of anchovy and fiery hot red pepper?

The primary pasta of Puglia, orrechiette is no more than a simple dough of hard flour and water rolled into disks and pressed with a thumb to resemble floppy caps. Benedetto Cavalieri, a local pasta maker, is reviving the art of pressing the hard-durum flour through bronze--rather than Teflon--molds, which creates a matte surface that holds sauce better. And now, Cavalieri pasta, with its whimsical shapes and charming old labels, is just coming into this country, thanks to Williams-Sonoma (and soon Zingerrman's, in Ann Arbor, MI).

Another essential at any banquet table or even a simple meal, for that matter, is the silken white luxury of homemade mozzarella or straw-colored provolone or scamorze, the mild creamy cheeses that hang in ball and pear shapes in cheese shops. Always there is the national dish of Puglia, fave incapriata, a puree of dried fava beans served with the lightly pungent, quickly made relish of capers and pickled onions, which also goes well with grilled fish.

Patience Gray, the English writer whose unforgettably eccentric prose has inspired a cult akin to that surrounding M.F.K. Fisher, is a longtime resident of Salento, the southernmost point of Puglia. In Honey from a Weed, she writes, "In Puglia, there is a feeling of being marooned in an older kind of time."

With her husband, Norman, an artist, Gray has chosen to stay marooned, without electricity or a telephone, in one of the region's many masserie--fortified farms enclosed with whitewashed stone fences that can extend for miles. But the couple is not immune to the encroachment of modern life, and often pile into their seasoned Jeep to rally against the ever-increasing pollution that threatens the sparse tip of Salento.

The Grays decry the absentee owners who do not, as they do, plant and harvest their own olives and beans (including the small and marvelous black ceci, or garbanzos). Or who don't pick capers off the wild bushes on every hillside, or forage for lampascioni--a Puglia prize, the bulbs of the grape hyacinth, preserved in vinegar or olive oil.

Unfortunately, these natural wonders may not be as eternal as Rome. But for now, at least, the Grays and other local farmers hold the future at bay. And the world can continue to eat and enjoy the food, and the recipes, perfected over the centuries and stored in the hearts and souls of Puglia's cooks.

Produced by Linda O'Keeffe and Donna Paul. Written by Corby Kummer.