🇮🇹 Italy · Lazio (Rome), Campania, Puglia and Sicily
Pasta e ceciItalian chickpea and pasta soup
An Italian soup of chickpeas and short pasta cooked together, with olive oil, garlic and rosemary and, in the Roman form, salted anchovy.
Origin and history
Turismo Roma says chickpeas were a protein-rich meat substitute on lean days and days of vigil, which is why they became a staple of Roman cooking, and that pasta e ceci alla romana is distinguished by a few salted anchovies, a tradition of more than a century; its recipe is Ada Boni's. The same page quotes Horace's Satires, where the poet comes home to a dish of leeks, chickpeas and lagana, a kind of proto-pasta: this shows chickpea-and-pasta dishes are old but does not prove this soup is that dish.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 4 servings
- Total time
- 2 h 45 min
- Hands-on
- 35 min
Ingredients
- 300 g1 2/3 cups dried chickpeas, soaked overnight in lukewarm water
- 2 sprigs rosemary, plus a few needles for finishing
- 150 g5.3 oz short pasta, cannolicchi, maltagliati or broken spaghetti
- 1 clove garlic
- 3 to 4 anchovy fillets in oil
- 2 tbsp tomato sauce or crushed canned tomatoes
- 60 ml1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for serving
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
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1. Drain the soaked chickpeas, put them in a pot with plenty of fresh water and the rosemary sprigs, and bring to a boil.
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2. Cook at a low simmer for at least 2 hours, until the chickpeas are completely soft, adding salt near the end. Keep the cooking water.
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3. In a large pot, warm the olive oil with the garlic, then add the anchovies and mash them with a fork until they dissolve.
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4. Add the tomato and let it reduce for a few minutes over a lively flame.
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5. Add the chickpeas with enough of their cooking water to cover them completely, let them take on flavour for about 10 minutes, and bring to a boil.
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6. Add the pasta and cook for about 8 minutes, until tender and the soup has thickened from the starch; add a little hot cooking water if it gets too thick.
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7. Serve with freshly ground pepper, a few chopped rosemary needles and a thread of raw olive oil.
Notes
- This is the Roman form after Ada Boni (via Turismo Roma, 4 servings): its marks are rosemary and a few salted anchovies, which the source says have been the Roman approach for over a century. The anchovies melt into the oil and do not make the soup taste of fish. Boni gives no amount of oil; the 60 ml here is our estimate.
- Dissapore says the dish is made in Sicily, Campania and Puglia, with the Roman version adding anchovy; its recipe purées two ladles of chickpeas and stirs them back in for creaminess, and flavours with celery, garlic and chili. In Salento the dish is ciceri e tria. Ricette dal Mondo's Neapolitan version starts with a soffritto of celery, carrot and onion, pancetta, white wine and passata, and calls the Roman version brothier.
- For a brothier soup, add more cooking water or vegetable broth.
- Canned or jarred chickpeas (about 600 g / 3 cups, drained) shorten the cooking but give a less rich cooking liquid.
- Tastes better the next day, but the pasta absorbs liquid; add water when reheating.
Adapted from Turismo Roma, I ceci e la pasta e ceci alla romana (after Ada Boni), Dissapore, Pasta e ceci ricetta, and Ricette dal Mondo, Pasta e ceci.
At the festivals
No festival we list has printed it on a menu yet.