Ciceri e Tria

Chickpeas with pasta of which a third is fried rather than boiled.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 300 g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
• 300 g semolina flour and 150 ml warm water, for the pasta
• 1 onion, 1 bay leaf, 1 celery stick
• 6 tablespoons olive oil, for dressing
• 300 ml olive oil, for frying, which is poured off
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
• black pepper

Method

1. Soak the chickpeas overnight, then simmer them with the onion, bay and celery for about 90 minutes until creamy. Salt them at the end and keep the liquid.
2. Make a plain semolina-and-water dough, no egg. Knead 10 minutes, rest an hour, then roll it thin and cut it into ribbons about 1 cm wide.
3. DIVIDE THE RIBBONS: two thirds will be boiled, one third FRIED. That split is the whole dish.
4. Fry the third in hot oil until they blister and go deep brown, 60 to 90 seconds. They turn brittle and nutty and taste nothing like the boiled ones. Drain on a rack.
5. Boil the other two thirds in the chickpea water for 4 minutes, so they take up its starch.
6. Combine the boiled pasta, the chickpeas and some of their liquid with the oil and garlic.
7. SCATTER THE FRIED RIBBONS ON TOP AT THE TABLE. Stirred in early they soften and the point of them is lost — they are meant to crunch against the soft chickpeas.
8. Pour the frying oil off once cooled.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes