🇬🇷 Greece · Sifnos, Cyclades
RevithadaSifnian baked chickpea soup
The chickpea dish of the island of Sifnos: chickpeas soaked overnight, then baked with onion, bay and olive oil in a lidded clay pot (skepastaria) in a wood oven overnight until they sit in a soft, lemony broth, eaten from a bowl on Sunday with a squeeze of lemon.
Origin and history
Revithada is the traditional Sunday dish of Sifnos, in the Cyclades, cooked in the island's own clay pots. National Geographic links it to the island's pottery tradition: potters working in coastal workshops came home on Saturdays expecting to be fed, and the overnight bake meant the women did not have to cook on Sundays. According to the Verina Hotels guide, families left their pots in the village bakery's warm wood oven and collected them on the way home from church.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 6 h 30 min
- Hands-on
- 20 min
Ingredients
- 500 g2 3/4 cups dried chickpeas, soaked in water overnight
- 1 tbsp baking soda, for a 30-minute second soak, then rinsed off well
- 2 large onions, peeled, sliced thinly
- 240 ml1 cup olive oil, good extra virgin
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 tsp salt
- 1.5 l6 cups water, enough to cover the chickpeas by about 2 cm (1 inch)
- lemons, cut in wedges, to serve
- 150 g1 cup flour, mixed with water into a stiff dough, only to seal the lid (optional)
Method
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1. The evening before, cover the chickpeas generously with water and soak them overnight.
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2. Next morning drain them, stir in the baking soda, cover with water and leave for 30 minutes; rinse thoroughly.
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3. Heat the oven to 150 °C (300 °F), or use a wood-fired oven whose fire has died down to a gentle heat.
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4. Put the chickpeas in a lidded clay pot (or a heavy casserole), slice the onions in, and add the oil, bay leaves and salt.
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5. Pour in water until it just covers the chickpeas.
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6. Put the lid on; for a traditional seal press a rope of flour-and-water dough around the rim.
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7. Bake for about 6 hours without opening. If the lid is not sealed, check occasionally and add a little hot water so the chickpeas do not dry out.
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8. Discard the bay leaves, ladle the soft chickpeas and their broth into bowls and serve warm, with a squeeze of lemon.
Notes
- On Sifnos revithada is cooked in a squat clay pot, the skepastaria, used only for this dish. National Geographic describes an olive-wood oven at about 450 C whose iron door is sealed with damp cloths for the night; the Verina Hotels guide describes the pots going into the village bakery's oven on Saturday evening, not freshly lit but still warm, and collected after church on Sunday. To Vima's piece on Sifnian cooking says the pot should be unglazed clay, not new, and the dish uses onion and nothing else besides oil, salt and a little pepper.
- The ingredients are only chickpeas, onion, bay, olive oil, salt and water: the islanders value its simplicity. A hotel's local guide for Sifnos adds garlic and pepper to its home version, and bakes about 6 hours at 150 °C (302 °F) in an electric oven; leave them out for the strictest version.
- Households took their pots to a shared village oven; National Geographic gives saving wood as the reason.
- Old or long-stored chickpeas need more time; fresh chickpeas cook faster.
- Churches on Sifnos cook large cauldrons of revithada, with mastelo, at feast days and share them with guests.
Adapted from National Geographic Travel: Exploring the flavours of Sifnos, Greece's gourmet island, Verina Hotel Sifnos: local guide to revithada, and To Vima: I geysi ton Kykladon.
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