Recipe: Foglie d’Ulivo ai Frutti di Mare – The Coastal Soul of Salento

Follow the coast south from Brindisi and you’ll find the world changing with each bend of the road. The olive trees grow lower, their trunks twisted like dancers in the wind. The air smells of salt and fennel, and the horizon blurs where sea meets sun.
This is Salento — a peninsula of light, where stone villages tumble toward the sea and every meal feels like an embrace between land and water.

Here, pasta is shaped by memory. And none captures the region’s spirit more than foglie d’ulivo ai frutti di mare — olive-leaf pasta with seafood.
It’s a dish born from contrast: the green of the fields, the silver of the sea, the simplicity of wheat meeting the abundance of the Mediterranean.

The Marriage of Sea and Tree

In Salento, life has always flowed between two elements — the olive tree and the sea. The first gives oil, the second gives sustenance. Together, they define everything from economy to flavor.
It’s no accident that foglie d’ulivo — olive leaves — became one of the region’s most beloved shapes. The pasta is made with semolina flour and, traditionally, a touch of pureed spinach or wild rocket, giving it a soft green hue like the leaf it mimics.

Each piece is rolled by hand into a narrow oval, then pressed down the center with a thumb to form a gentle curve — a shape that cradles sauce as a leaf cradles dew. It’s rustic but graceful, like much of Salento itself.

When these little “leaves” meet the briny sweetness of clams, mussels, prawns, and squid, something alchemical happens. The earth and the sea don’t compete; they complete each other.

A Dish from the Coast

The story of frutti di mare in Salento is older than any recipe book. Fishermen in Otranto, Gallipoli, and Santa Maria di Leuca once returned home with baskets of mixed catch — whatever the sea had offered that day. In small coastal kitchens, women would clean and simmer the fish with tomato, garlic, and a handful of herbs. The sauce would then be tossed with fresh pasta made that morning — simple, immediate, alive.

There was no precise rule about which seafood to use. The point was freshness, not uniformity. Mussels for sweetness, clams for depth, prawns for luxury, squid for texture — each bite telling a part of the story of the sea.

Today, foglie d’ulivo ai frutti di mare carries that same spontaneity, balancing elegance with everyday honesty. It’s not the elaborate restaurant seafood pasta you might expect — it’s the dish you’d find in a seaside home, cooked quickly but with devotion.

Traditional Recipe: Foglie d’Ulivo ai Frutti di Mare

Serves: 4
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 400g foglie d’ulivo (fresh or dried)
• 500g mussels, cleaned
• 300g clams, purged of sand
• 200g prawns, peeled (reserve shells for stock)
• 150g squid or calamari, sliced into rings
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 300g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 small bunch of parsley, chopped
• 80ml dry white wine
• 5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and black pepper

Method

1. Prepare the seafood.
   In a large pan, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil and add the shells from the prawns. Toast them briefly, splash with white wine and a little water, and simmer for 10 minutes to create a light stock. Strain and set aside.
2. Cook the shellfish.
   In a clean pan, heat more olive oil with one clove of garlic. Add the mussels and clams, cover, and cook for a few minutes until they open. Remove from heat, discard any that remain closed, and keep the juices.
3. Make the sauce.
   In a wide skillet, heat the remaining olive oil with the other garlic clove. Add the cherry tomatoes and let them blister and release their juices. Pour in the reserved shellfish liquid and a ladle of the prawn stock. Simmer gently for 5–7 minutes.
4. Add the seafood.
   Stir in the squid and cook until tender, then add the prawns, mussels, and clams. Simmer just long enough for everything to come together. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
5. Cook the pasta.
   In a large pot of salted water, boil the foglie d’ulivo until al dente. Reserve some cooking water before draining.
6. Combine.
   Toss the pasta into the sauce, adding a splash of its water if needed to help the flavors cling. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and finish with a drizzle of olive oil.
7. Serve.
   Serve immediately, while the pasta still shimmers, and breathe in the scent of the sea.

It’s a dish to be eaten slowly, with gratitude — one forkful at a time, each bite tasting of tide and sun.

Plant-Based Variation: Foglie d’Ulivo al Profumo di Mare

For those who don’t eat seafood, the essence of this dish — the scent of the sea — can still be captured through the land.
Chefs across southern Italy have re-imagined frutti di mare with ingredients that echo the same flavors naturally.

Serves: 4
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

• 400g foglie d’ulivo (fresh or dried)
• 200g oyster mushrooms, torn into strips
• 1 small jar artichoke hearts in oil, drained and quartered
  
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
  
• 300g cherry tomatoes, halved
  
• 1 tbsp capers, rinsed
  
• 1 tsp soy sauce or tamari
  
• ½ sheet nori seaweed, finely shredded (or 1 tsp seaweed flakes)
  
• 80ml dry white wine
  
• 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  
• Zest of ½ lemon
  
• Fresh parsley, chopped
  
• Salt and black pepper

Method

1. Prepare the base.
   In a large skillet, warm the olive oil over medium heat and add the garlic. Let it perfume the oil without burning, then add the oyster mushrooms. Cook for 5–6 minutes until they begin to brown and release their juices.

2. Add depth.
   Stir in the artichoke hearts, capers, and a touch of soy sauce or tamari. Deglaze with white wine and let it simmer until the liquid reduces by half.

3. Build the sauce.
   Add the cherry tomatoes and a pinch of seaweed flakes. Let everything cook gently for 10 minutes, allowing the tomatoes to soften into a rustic sauce. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

4. Cook the pasta.
   Boil the foglie d’ulivo in salted water until al dente, reserving a little of the cooking water before draining.

5. Combine and finish.
   Toss the pasta into the pan with the sauce, adding a splash of its water to help it bind. Stir through the lemon zest and chopped parsley. Taste and balance with a final drizzle of olive oil.

Serve warm, with an extra twist of lemon over the top. The result is delicate yet deeply flavorful — the sea remembered through the earth.

The Taste of Sun and Salt

There’s something almost spiritual about how Salento’s people treat the sea. They don’t conquer it; they listen to it. This dish is proof.
Every element — the olive-leaf pasta, the tomatoes, the seafood — reflects balance and respect. Nothing dominates, nothing wasted. Even the shells are turned into stock, their essence returned to the sauce.

It’s a dish that mirrors the landscape: bright, minimal, harmonious. Like the coastline itself, it’s defined not by excess but by light.

Fun Facts

• The shape foglie d’ulivo originated near Lecce, where pasta makers tinted the dough with puréed spinach to resemble young olive leaves.
  
• Fishermen’s families once sold leftover mussels and clams at the market for a few coins — these “poor” shellfish later became the region’s most celebrated delicacy.
  
• Traditional Salentino cooks used earthenware pots called pignate for seafood sauces, believing they kept the flavors purer than metal pans.
  
• In some villages, pasta with seafood was eaten only on Fridays as part of religious fasting traditions — a humble meal that became a celebration.
  
• Local lore says the curve of each pasta “leaf” should be shaped with a single thumbprint — a mark of care left by the maker.

A Bowl of the Sea

Foglie d’Ulivo ai Frutti di Mare is more than a recipe — it’s Salento on a plate. It holds the sun in its tomatoes, the sea in its broth, and the land in its wheat.

There’s no pretension, no need for flourish. Just the rhythm of waves, the scent of olive oil warming in a pan, and the promise of something honest.

Each bite feels like standing on the shore at dusk — salt on your lips, wind in your hair, the horizon wide open.
And when the last drop of sauce is wiped away with a piece of bread, what lingers isn’t just flavor, but a sense of belonging — to a land where food, like the sea, has no end.