Cooking Regional Food When You're Far From The Fava Beans

EnlargeNancy Shute/NPR

Chef Mino Massi and his son Robi prep food from Puglia at the Washington, D.C. convention center.

How do you showcase regional food when you're not in the region? Don't smuggle the salami in, that's for sure.

That's the advice I got from Mino Maggi, a chef fromLocorotondo, Italy, who came to Washington, D.C., last week to demonstrate the food of Puglia at the summer Fancy Food Show. There he was, in the windowless bowels of the Convention Center, trying to invoke the allure of food from a land of olive trees and Adriatic breezes.