In Peschici, a widespread cooking school to discover the territory out of season

The "forgotten" bread from Cagnano Varano, the oysters from Lake Varano, the cheeses from the educational masseria in Carpino, the flour from ancient grains obtained by millstones in Zilletta di Brancia. Behind each food a slice of Gargano territory that also becomes an open-field "didactic" classroom where lessons are held by the international school of "diffused" cuisine of Peschici, a seaside village of 4,300 souls on the northern coast of the Gargano.

So, from October until next May, 200 young people (in groups of 20, except for the last month when there will be 60) from all over the world (EU, Asia, the Americas) will travel for 5-6 days to as many destinations in the area, learning about the origin of the simplest dishes of Gargano cuisine and taking back to their countries of origin the sovereign rule: make local food and cuisine according to what the area offers at that moment: poor fish, spontaneous vegetables, home-made pasta, and the Evo oil that unites everything.

The 53-year-old Domenico Cilenti, Gargano's first star chef, wanted this school. He has his restaurant "Porta di Basso" in the old town centre of Peschici, inside the lime and stone vaults of an old oil mill, with a terrace a hundred metres above the sea, with a view of some Croatian islands and the peaks of the Maiella. Cilenti has done even more in the old town centre, recovering eight abandoned spaces to make two classrooms for the school and a hotel for aspiring chefs, with the result that the fishing village, which is super crowded in summer, is alive in the other months too.

An example of circular economy that also engages many of the village women in preparing, for example, breakfast, marinating fish and so on. The same involvement for the boys in their 'educational outings', as Cilenti, a chef with a double life, calls them: first a degree in geometry, then one, taken at night school, at the hotel management school in Vieste and experience in Lugano and a return to his mother's osteria.

The school offers these young people living experiences, not desktops: in the Furcichella trebuchet in Peschici, where Giuseppino, 92 years old, catches blue fish, or in the Varano lake for oyster fishing, or in Leonardo's stone mill for the indigenous flour of Zilletta di Brancia, in San Severo, or in Cagnano Varano, at Salvatore Curatolo's, with his 'forgotten bread', reheated and still crunchy even after a month in the fridge, or in the Facenna educational farm in Carpino for cheese.