The traditional dishes of Matera

The Nadì Restaurant mainly offers traditional Materan cuisine.

The Cialledda

In summer the chopped stale bread was soaked and kneaded with the hands together with the tomatoes, to the mixture was added what the summer season provided, mainly vegetables, onions and olives all seasoned with extra virgin olive oil and oregano.

In the winter version, on the other hand, bread was soaked in hot water, seasonal vegetables and often a poached egg were placed inside. Along with the pan-baked turnips, the hot Cialledda was often the farmers’ breakfast.
It is one of the bread-based dishes that almost all restaurateurs prepare, both in summer and winter along with the dumpling meatballs, the meatballs with eggs and fried pecorino cheese cooked in tomato sauce.

The Pignata

It takes its name from the earthenware vessel similar to a jug in which the sheep is cooked. The meat, after having degreased it in boiling water, is put into the jug together with pieces of pecorino, sausage and a series of vegetables, aromatic herbs and the inevitable wild chicory. Once the jug is filled, the mouth of the Pignata is sealed with the bread dough and baked for several hours depending on its size. Once the cooking is finished, the cover of bread dough is eliminated and the stew served hot on the plates accompanied with fresh bread.

Mashed broad beans with wild herbs (chicory)

Fave and chicory is a very simple dish, very good and brilliant. The ingredients are wild Cicorielle and mashed beans; the first are bitter vegetables that enhance the sweet taste of the beans. The two flavors are expertly enhanced by the fruity and fresh flavor of local extra virgin olive oil. The wild Cicorielle are usually harvested in the fields but in the periods in which they are absent they can be very well replaced by the cultivated chicory. The bean puree is made exclusively by cooking in water and salt from the dried broad beans that when they cook, they break up to create a smooth and creamy puree obtained without adding anything else. A healthy, special and delicious dish.

The Crapiata

It is a soup of legumes and cereals typically Materan, it was prepared during the homonymous party that closed the year of agricultural work. The festival of Crapiata falls on the first of August and is still held today in some neighborhoods of the Sassi, revolving around the preparation of a soup "svuota dispensa", of lentils, chickling, beans, wheat and other cereals. La Crapiata is a feast very much felt by the people of Matera. All the inhabitants of the neighborhood in the summer emptied the bins in which the vegetables were stored during the winter to make room for the freshly harvested ones. In doing so, some more or less and some for nothing contributed to creating the Crapiata, the neighborhood soup that everyone ate and that became an occasion for socializing, mutual help and of course conviviality.