Campania

Everything in Campania starts with volcanoes. Vesuvius, the Campi Flegrei and Roccamonfina buried the plain in loose, potassium-rich soil that concentrates flavour in vegetables: the piennolo cherry tomato, hung in bunches on a balcony and still good in March; the San Marzano, thin-skinned and low-seeded, the only tinned tomato the pizza rulebook accepts; Vesuvian apricots and winter friarielli greens. Around them, the Volturno and Sele plains graze the Mediterranean water buffalo behind mozzarella di bufala campana DOP, a fresh cheese that should be eaten within a day of being made, and never straight from the fridge.

Naples cooks like a poor city: pasta, vegetables and frying, with meat used sparingly. Pasta di Gragnano IGP comes from a town above Castellammare whose streets were laid out to funnel the sea breeze and dry spaghetti hung outdoors. Neapolitan pizza has a protected specification that reads like geography: flour, water, salt, yeast, wood oven at 430-480°C for sixty to ninety seconds. And ragù napoletano is not bolognese: whole cuts of beef and pork simmered in tomato for five or six hours, the sauce eaten with pasta and the meat served afterwards as a second course.

The Amalfi Coast and the Sorrento peninsula are different again: IGP lemons on terraced pergolas, colatura di alici from Cetara (an amber anchovy sauce descended from Roman garum), provolone del Monaco aged in the Lattari hills, and scialatielli, a short fat pasta invented in the 1960s. Further south, in the Cilento, Ancel Keys lived for three decades at Pioppi while formulating the Mediterranean diet; the local plate is white figs, goat's cacioricotta and anchovies caught in the wide-mesh menaica net that lets small fish through.

Inland is the Campania most visitors skip and sommeliers know by heart. In Irpinia, at 400 to 700 metres, three DOCG wines are made: Taurasi from Aglianico, plus Greco di Tufo and Fiano di Avellino, whites that can age a decade. Around them come the chestnuts of Montella, the hazelnuts of Giffoni that supply half the confectionery industry, podolico caciocavallo, and a mountain kitchen of pork and pulses.