This week we are cooking a dish from Basilicata

There is a pasta dish from Basilicata that might just inspire you to put this extraordinary, largely undiscovered region on your travel list. It is called pasta con i peperoni cruschi, and the star of the show is one of the most unusual ingredients in all of Italian cooking. The peperone di Senise is a sweet, elongated red pepper grown only in the sun-scorched hills around Senise, harvested by hand every summer, strung into large wreaths and left to dry in the open air for weeks. Then it is dropped into hot olive oil for just a few seconds… and something extraordinary happens. It shatters. It becomes paper-thin, brick red, impossibly light and crispy, like the most flavourful crisp you have ever eaten, but delicate enough to crumble at a touch.

Tossed through pasta with breadcrumbs, a little olive oil and sometimes a spoonful of ricotta, it is one of those dishes that tastes like it took hours and actually takes twenty minutes.

Peperoni cruschi are available online and in Italian specialty shops around the world. No excuses.