A dish that, like cartellate at Christmas , is part of the Apulian tradition and that we love to taste and prepare often.
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The origins of pasta and chickpeas are very ancient: the poet Horace spoke of it as early as 35 BC, this first course has numerous versions and variations.
The best known is called “ciceri e tria” , typical of the Salento area, where the peculiarity is found in the double cooking of the pasta (strictly handmade): one part is normally cooked in boiling water, the other is fried in boiling oil.
In fact, Tria means “fried pasta” in the Salento dialect.
Chickpeas, the main ingredient in this recipe, are the seeds of a legume that has been cultivated since ancient times in the Mediterranean basin.
Small, rounded, and cream-colored, they are harvested during the summer and sold dried in the fall. For this reason, chickpeas, like all legumes, must be rehydrated before use.
In fact, we recommend using dried chickpeas to prepare Apulian chickpea pasta and soaking them in warm water for 24 hours.
Once rinsed, they can be cooked in cold, unsalted water for at least 2-3 hours (to speed up the process, you can use a pressure cooker).
How to prepare Apulian pasta and chickpeas
Ingredients for 4 people:
- 250g of dried chickpeas
- 250g of ditaloni pasta or short minestrone pasta
- 100 g of tomato
- Simone extra virgin olive oil
- salt
- pepper
- rosemary
- garlic
Procedure:
- Soak the chickpeas in cold water for a day
- Drain the chickpeas and cook them in unsalted water over very low heat for about three hours (alternatively, you can halve the cooking time by using a pressure cooker).
- Sauté the oil, garlic, and rosemary in a pan. Once it sizzles, add the drained and chopped tomatoes, salt, and ground pepper.
- Let it cook and flavour for a few minutes, at the end of cooking remove the garlic and rosemary.
- Take about half of the chickpeas from the cooking pan and pass them through a sieve.
- Put them back in the same pan, add the soffritto and the pasta, which you will cook together with the chickpeas.
- Serve the pasta and chickpeas hot, with a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
Once ready and plated, we recommend serving them with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and enjoying them freshly prepared and piping hot.
The perfect oil to enhance the simplicity of this dish is Simone monovarietal extra virgin olive oil, which enhances the flavor of the dish without overpowering its aromas.
They can be stored in the refrigerator in a container for a couple of days.
Chickpeas and tria recipe
Let's see instead how to prepare the ciceri e tria variant.
Ingredients:
- 300 g of re-milled semolina
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil Simone
- 160 ml of water
- 400 g of chickpeas already boiled in water and bay leaves
- 2 cloves of garlic
- an onion
- extra virgin olive oil
- salt
- pepper and chili pepper
- seed oil for frying
Procedure:
- To prepare the dough, knead the semolina, the two tablespoons of oil and the water on a pastry board.
- Roll out a sheet of dough that shouldn't be too thin, cut out some tagliatelle, roll them up and leave them to dry for at least an hour.
- Meanwhile, fry the garlic, onion and chilli pepper
- Remove the garlic and add the chickpeas, add salt and cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes.
- Now fry ⅓ of the pasta in seed oil, drain it and keep it warm aside.
- Boil the remaining pasta in plenty of salted water, drain it, and add it to the chickpeas.
- Let it flavour for a few minutes and serve it plated with the fried pasta, a pinch of pepper and a drizzle of raw extra virgin olive oil.
Chickpeas are a very versatile ingredient; you can use them to prepare soups, purées, stews, pates, and hummus. However, remember to consume them within a year of purchase, otherwise they become too hard and lose their nutritional value.
Chickpeas are foods rich in lipids, iron, and fiber, and have good antioxidant properties like extra virgin olive oil.
They are digestible, diuretic and are recommended for containing blood cholesterol levels .
In addition to dried, chickpeas are also found in flour form or canned and already cooked.
