Calabria

Calabria runs nearly 400 kilometres from north to south and is barely thirty wide in places, with two seas and three mountain ranges (Pollino, Sila and Aspromonte) rising above 1,000 metres almost from the shoreline. Nowhere else in Italy are highland and coast so compressed, and the food shows it: within half an hour's drive you move from a Tyrrhenian fishermen's kitchen to a shepherds' one of potatoes, porcini and aged caciocavallo, sharing almost no ingredients.

Chilli arrived after the Columbian exchange and found both the climate and the job it needed here: preservation. 'Nduja from Spilinga, a village on Monte Poro, is the extreme version: soft pork fat and hot chilli ground to a spreadable paste, cased and lightly smoked, spicy enough to melt into a sauce from a spoonful. Sardella, from the Ionian coast, is newborn sardine packed with chilli and wild fennel. Even Calabria's four DOP cured meats (capocollo, soppressata, pancetta, sausage) are formally split into sweet and hot versions.

The farmed products are intensely local. Tropea red onions grow on a narrow sandy coastal strip and are sweet enough to eat raw in a salad. Bergamot, the citrus that gives Earl Grey its scent, grows commercially almost nowhere else on earth: 90 per cent of world production comes from 100 kilometres of coast south of Reggio Calabria. Calabrian liquorice, made at the Amarelli works in Rossano since 1731, is rated the best in the world for glycyrrhizin content. Up on the Sila, at 1,200 metres, come IGP potatoes, porcini and caciocavallo silano.

On the Strait of Messina the cooking shifts again. Bagnara and Scilla have hunted swordfish from spotting towers and long bow-walkways for centuries; it is cooked alla ghiotta with capers, olives and tomato, or rolled into involtini. Inland from Crotone the reference points are sheep's cheese and Cirò, made from the Gaglioppo grape and one of the oldest named wines in Italy: in modern hands, far less rustic than its reputation.