Eleonora wasn’t a Couchsurfer, but she was another ‘stranger’ who welcomed me to her home, Maison Lizia.

In fact, it was back in Bologna when we first met. I came across this food-related event on Facebook. A cookbook writer, food blogger and sommelier Patrizia would come to the bar/bookshop (which I found out later was a Pugliese bar) to present her new book, followed by some samplings of typical food from the region. I knew I was going to Puglia and I couldn’t miss it.

I arrived there on time, but I probably forgot that everyone involved tonight was from the South, and the concept of being punctual wasn’t very popular there. So I sat in the courtyard with my journal, spent an hour there filling in the pages with words.

Then they started talking, in Italian obviously. It was a combination of lateness and tiredness that took my attention away and I couldn’t be bothered to try to understand, wasn’t even sure if I would understand if I tried. So I just flipped through the cookbook and looked at the photos.

Bored, I thought to myself that at least I would get to try something delicious afterwards.

Somehow I paid a bit more attention at the end, and understood that the girl with a camera who was taking photos around that night, was not only the food photographer for this cookbook, but also Patrizia’s daughter, Eleonora.

So I approached her and we started talking.

I was so impressed that she took all these photographs for the cookbook, and she was only eighteen.

It turned out that they lived right next to Altamura in Puglia, the only place I knew I would be staying for sure in April because my Workaway host lived there.

We exchanged our contacts, and three weeks later, they picked me up from a bus station in Santeramo and welcomed me to their home, where we spent two days taking photos, cooking and eating together.



Ele planned an eventful itinerary for me, from going to Polignano for an amazing gelato at 10pm, trying out panzerotto, visiting Bari and showed me some fishermen traditions like how they prepared the ‘polpo’ or octopus, and going to Matera with her mum who knew the town incredibly well.

The highlight couldn’t be anything else but all the food stories I learned from them, especially when her granny came over and made oreccheitte con grano arso with us. Grano arso, or burnt wheat, had a story behind it. Because people in the past were really poor, some of them would go around burnt wheat field and collected the toasted wheat grain to make flour. It had a darker colour, some grey and some brown, and tasted a little toasty. After a while of taking photos, I also stuck my hands in the dough and learned how to make this tiny ear-shaped, as well as cavatelli and strascinati. Four hours after we entered the kitchen, we finally a delicious homemade lunch consisted of friselle topped with tomatoes, cavatelli with roasted vegetables and little baked aubergine cup filled with ricotta, roasted tomato sauce and something else very sophisticated.


Sophisticatedly mouth-watering.



Apart from eating a lot of yummy food (which was always the case in Puglia anyway), I also learned something about my creative practice. I had done quite a bit of food photography before, but nothing serious and definitely not with another food photographer. It was a whole new experience for me. Through working with Ele and her mum, wandering around the kitchen, up and down the steps, pointing cameras at everything and being asked if they should pause their actions for me to take photos, I understood the beauty of collaboration. It was so nice to share these specific interests with someone. Same passion yet coming from different backgrounds, we learned from each other and that generated the conversations.

Through our love for food and photography we shared and bound.