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APULICA / FRUIT, VEGETABLES AND PULSES

Carpino broad bean

PAT · Slow Food Presidium · Fruit, vegetables and pulses · Puglia

Apulica editorial team · Sources checked:

In brief

History and origin

Carpino is a town in the Gargano hinterland, and its limestone and clay soils have always suited broad beans. A local population considered among the most prized in Puglia is grown here, and the Gargano National Park lists it among the typical pulses of Gargano cooking, often grown in family plots laid out in terraces along the slopes.

Historical sources on bean growing in the Capitanata date back to the early nineteenth century: the Foggia historian Luigi Baselice briefly describes the technique in an 1812 report. In the 1929 agricultural land register the municipality of Carpino had 303 hectares under broad beans, and traditional threshing is described in Giovanni Tancredi's 1938 book Folklore Garganico.

The Carpino broad bean has been on the national list of traditional products since 2005, is entered in the regional register of Apulian varieties at risk of genetic erosion and is a Slow Food Presidium supported by the Park. In 2014 it even reached space: it was among the pulses in the mix eaten by astronauts on the International Space Station, including Samantha Cristoforetti.

Sources: Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Fava di Carpino · Parco Nazionale del Gargano — Prodotti tipici: Fava di Carpino · Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Fava di Carpino

Area and method of production

The Carpino broad bean is grown in rotation with durum wheat, sugar beet, tomatoes and lupins, on small plots averaging half a hectare. It is sown between October and November and no fertiliser is used: the bean enriches the soil with nitrogen on its own. No treatments are applied, and weeds are removed by hand.

Flowering comes 90-120 days after sowing. Between June and July, when the plants turn yellow, they are cut or pulled up by hand and tied into sheaves, the manocchi, left to dry in the field. Meanwhile the arij is prepared, a circular threshing floor: the ground is wetted, covered with straw and pressed until it forms a hard, compact surface.

In July, when the sheaves are thoroughly dry, they are laid out on the floor and, with the sun high, the pesa begins: a farmer stands in the middle while one or more horses walk in circles crushing the sheaves. Wooden forks are then used to separate the beans from the straw, and finally the beans are tossed into the air with wooden shovels, letting the afternoon breeze carry away the lighter particles.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Fava di Carpino · Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Fava di Carpino · Parco Nazionale del Gargano — Prodotti tipici: Fava di Carpino

How to recognise it

The Carpino broad bean has small or medium-small, flattened seeds with a small hollow at the base. At harvest the skin is green; with time it lightens to a sandy colour. If well dried in the sun the seeds keep for a long time, which is why the dried bean is available all year.

The Gargano National Park highlights its nutritional qualities: its protein content can exceed 25 per cent. It is grown without synthetic fertilisers or pesticides, on calcium-rich clay soils, and the Park describes it as the most prized broad bean in the region.

Full ripening of the pods comes 170-210 days after sowing, and harvest takes place when the plants are yellow and dry.

Sources: Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Fava di Carpino · Parco Nazionale del Gargano — Prodotti tipici: Fava di Carpino

In the kitchen

The dried broad bean is one of the foundations of Apulian cooking, and the dish that best represents it is fave bianche e cicorie, broad bean purée with chicory, listed among the region's traditional products. The dried beans, with their skins removed, are soaked for about ten hours and then cooked covered with water in the pignatta, alone or with a few aromatics and a little extra virgin olive oil, until they turn into a purée.

The purée is served in deep plates over boiled wild greens, chicory, bristly oxtongue or sow thistle, alone or mixed, and dressed with more extra virgin olive oil. It is a nourishing, protein-rich dish that is also easy to digest: the food historian Luigi Sada described it as a bond of identity between the people of Puglia and this pulse, and called the slow cooking of skinned beans a ritual requiring time, care and a clay pignatta.

For anyone taking home a pack of dried Carpino beans, this is the regional reference recipe for skinned broad beans; while travelling, fave e cicorie is commonly found in trattorias, restaurants and agriturismi across Puglia.

Sources: Atlante PAT Puglia (Università di Bari, Regione Puglia) — Fave bianche e cicorie · Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Fava di Carpino

Where to taste it

The Carpino broad bean is to be found in Carpino, in the heart of the Gargano, where it is sold in traditional and specialist shops. The field season is summer: harvest between June and July and, in July, threshing on the floor with horses. The town devotes to this moment the Festa della Pesatura, which re-enacts threshing according to old farming traditions, and an olive oil and broad bean festival in August, both recorded by the PAT atlas.

Carpino lies within the Gargano National Park, the promontory jutting into the Adriatic, made of karst rock, lush vegetation and crystal-clear sea. From the town one can reach the Foresta Umbra, the coastal lakes of Lesina and Varano and the coast that runs from Manfredonia up to Mattinata and Vieste, among cliffs, white rocks and trabucchi.

A trip to the Gargano can thus combine sea, nature and food: a summer day in Carpino, during the threshing, offers a close look at an ancient farming task and a chance to take home a pulse that tells the story of this land.

Sources: Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Fava di Carpino · Italia.it (Ministero del Turismo) — Gargano · Parco Nazionale del Gargano — Prodotti tipici: Fava di Carpino

Protection

When

Where

Puglia