They look like chips but they are orecchiette with fried turnip tops. The innovative snack for aperitifs and fast breakers directly from Altamura has reached the national final of the innovations presented by the young entrepreneurs of Coldiretti at the Oscar Green, the Made in Italy creativity fair that creates jobs, saves the climate and the environment and guarantees food, services and energy to the country that is celebrated at the Coldiretti Village in Venice. Taking the oldest variety of turnip tops, the ‘miezz tiemp’ harvested fresh at the beginning of spring, Nicola Dibenedetto has revisited a symbol of Apulian cuisine, orecchiette, making them a tasty appetizer for bars and restaurants, incorporating vegetables into the dough and then frying everything to obtain tasty crunchy chips. Nicola started from the typical dish of Puglia, known nationally but which has also crossed the borders of the Bel Paese, realizing the innovative idea that reached the national final in the Campagna Amica category, offering consumers a snack to always carry with them, as a fast breaker or as a break during the working day. A delicious snack that does not need pots and pans, but is the must of Puglia cuisine ready to be consumed.
The nearly 20,000 young farmers who drive innovation in Puglia represent the renewed attractiveness of the countryside for young people – underlines Coldiretti Puglia – which is reflected in the common belief that agriculture has become a sector capable of offering and creating employment opportunities and professional growth, which are also destined to increase over time, with a strategic role in relaunching the economy of its territories and achieving the goal of food sovereignty. “Of the agricultural companies run by young people in Puglia, 15.3% of the total are organic and 23% are involved in the stables, with new green ideas to guarantee food and energy to Puglia against the crisis triggered by the war and the blockade of supplies of agricultural raw materials and Russian blackmail on gas and oil”, says Donato Mercadante, leader of Coldiretti Giovani Impresa Puglia, in underlining that “12% of young companies in the fields – specifies Coldiretti – carry out related activities that are therefore on the front line with respect to the multifunctional agricultural model with important repercussions on the environment and the community, as in the case of the production of renewable energy or social agriculture”, concluded Mercadante.
The companies that are running for the Oscar Green are representative of a model of sustainable innovation in agriculture that has its roots in the land and in the communities – concludes Coldiretti Puglia – with stories of young people, true protagonists of the ecological transition, that arise both from the need to make an individual business dream come true and from the desire to respond to the needs of a community, creating original products or enriching the territory with services that would otherwise be impossible to guarantee.
