Olio Santo

Preparation

1. The Lucanian hand with peperoncino is generous, extravagant, sometimes oppressive, almost as though to restrain some ephemeral longing for delicacy or to redeem, somehow, the sameness, the insufficiency of his stores. His weapon, often, is a bottle of his own good olive oil inspirited with a fierce dose of chile peppers that he calls olio santo—sainted oil. And with it, he gives benediction to nearly everything he cooks and eats. He has no recipe for its composition, only the counsel to crush as many of the little red bestie (beasts) as one can fit into a liter or so of warmed oil. A more serene prescription for it is to warm 2 cups of extra-virgin olive oil and to excite it with as many as 10 crushed chiles, to pour the oil into a bottle with a tight stopper and to use it sparingly. Here follow, then, six recipes for typical, straightforward Lucanian dishes that beg the chile and/or olio santo and that argue the candidness of the cuisine, of the goodness that can come from “making do.”