There is a fire that has never gone out, in Crispiano, the land of a hundred farmhouses. It is the one that burns in the heart and in the oven of Martino Marsella, born in 1942, the last witness of an ancient tradition: the ready stove, a popular and culinary ritual that has transformed the Apulian butcher shops into small village grills.
It all began in the late 1950s, when a very young Martino — not yet eighteen — took over a small butcher shop in the center of Crispiano. "I couldn't even register the license in my name," he proudly recounts, "but the trade was in the family: my mother was the daughter of butchers, my brother Pasqualino taught me everything." His story is that of a generation that learned the trade with their hands, sweat, and charcoal.
In an era when butcher shops were places of community, Martino transforms that small workshop into a landmark for the town.
From the workshop arises, little by little, the ready stovetop: a masonry oven, covered with refractory bricks, with a round dome, built to retain heat and roast meat "in the good way," as was done in the past. The meats — lamb, liver, sausage, bombette — are threaded onto long vertical skewers, placed to the side or in front of the live coals. The fat slowly drips down, never touching the charcoal, and the aroma fills the room like an ancient promise.
"The stove breathes," explains Marsella, "it lights up with a bit of fat, a piece of paper, and good charcoal, the old-fashioned kind, cooked in the Murgia. The flame is adjusted with the door: you close it and it calms down, you open it and it comes back to life." It is a form of cooking that requires experience, skill, and respect for time: "There is no thermometer that works, you see the cooking point by the color of the meat."
In the 1970s and 1980s, while many colleagues were closing or modernizing, Martino stood firm. From a simple takeout butcher shop, his establishment evolved into a restaurant: La Cuccagna.
"It started with about forty seats at first," he recalls, "now we have eighty. But the stove is still the same." La Cuccagna — the name was chosen by his son Gianni, then a student in Bari — was created as a declaration of love for abundance and conviviality: "When he arrived from his university friends with packages full of meat and homemade sweets, his friends would say: 'the feast has arrived!'".
Over time, the restaurant is joined by the wine shop Giro di Vite, opened in 2001, a product of the new generation. The name, explains Paola, Gianni's wife, "represents the vine shoot but also a passage of life, our 'turning point' as a couple and as a business." It is proof that tradition can renew itself without losing its soul.
Today, while many ready-made cookers from the Valle d'Itria and Taranto have disappeared, in Crispiano the fire of the Cuccagna – Giro di Vite still burns. "In the past, four lambs were consumed per week," says Martino, "now one is enough. Tastes have changed: now customers demand more steaks and cuts, but the cooker remains the heart of the establishment."
Despite the weather, his passion has never waned. "If I stop, I lose myself," he confesses. And he has truly never stopped. For over sixty years, he continues to light that oven, regulate the embers, and watch over every skewer like a conductor.
The tradition of the ready stove, a recent study explains, is typical of central Apulia, between the Itria Valley and the Taranto Murgia.
It is a practice that combines craftsmanship and sociality, born in the post-war period and survived thanks to men like our Martino, guardians of knowledge that is passed down through observation and dedication.
Today, in an era of quick cooking and global formats, the slowness of the ready stove becomes almost revolutionary. In San Giorgio Ionico, Luigi Fabbiano, a young restaurateur, has decided to recover tradition by building a new stove with the help of an old master craftsman: a sign that something is moving, that the scent of embers continues to attract those who love the truth of meat and the memory of places.
"In my life, I have always worked almost twenty hours a day," Martino concludes, "and I hope that those who come after me will not have to make the same sacrifices I did. The job is beautiful, but it is hard. However, as long as I am here, the fire of the Cuccagna will continue to burn for our clients."
And while the stove crackles softly, it really seems that the flame, more than cooking the meat, is cooking time — roasting the memory of a Apulia that still tastes of embers, of home, and of heart.
