Fish Cooking Class

"Le Cucchiare: An Unconventional Day with Salento's Seafood Treasures"

There's a particular kind of magic when you cook with someone who truly knows the sea—not theoretically, but through a lifetime of respect for what it offers.

At Le Cucchiare, the unconventional fish cooking class begins with an introduction to ingredients you won't find anywhere else. Alessandra brings fresh seafood that arrived in the morning: fish from local waters, prawns from Gallipoli, mussels that taste like the ocean itself.

She teaches you not just what to do, but why each movement matters. You learn that cooking seafood isn't about fussy techniques, it's about reverence. The hands-on learning is collaborative: your hands in the pasta dough, you learning to feel when fish is done by touch, you tasting sauces and trusting your palate. Alessandra moves through the kitchen with you, sharing stories about fishermen, about her grandmother's techniques, about why Salento's seafood

tradition has survived for centuries.

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As you prepare grilled fish with aromatic herbs, seafood pasta with traditional sauces, and small appetizers that somehow contain entire worlds, your confidence grows. You're not watching a demonstration, you're creating. Three Salento wines arrive at strategic moments, each one chosen to guide your palate deeper into understanding this place. The market experience (optional but transformative) happens beforehand, teaching you to recognize quality, to understand seasonality, to see food as a conversation between farmer, vendor, and cook.

In Alessandra's kitchen overlooking the Mediterranean, the gentle chorus of cicadas from her terrace mingles with the aroma of fresh seafood, creating an atmosphere where the sea, the land, and authentic Salento cuisine come alive together.

When you sit down to the meal, you're tasting not just dishes, but a culture. Everything before you, you made. Your decisions shaped it. Your respect for the ingredients guided it. You taste homemade food prepared with traditional methods and local ingredients, the kind that can't be replicated from a recipe because it lives in understanding.

This is why the class is called "unconventional", it's not about becoming technically perfect. It's about becoming someone who understands that feeding people is sacred, that the spoon is never just a utensil, that presence matters more than perfection.