Chickpeas and pasta
- rosemary
- Mar 16
- 4 min read
"one of the most deliciously frugal and honest platefuls I know."
Rachel Roddy
"a healing dose of starch on starch." Katie Leaird
I sort of give up. I was vaguely aware that there were a huge number of recipes popping up here and there of late that featured chickpeas and pasta, so I thought I would try and find out why they are such a thing? Nobody seemed to have an answer. So I am assuming that it's just a holy trinity kind of thing of healthy - legumes and all that - pasta - well as I said the other day - the most popular food in the world and moreover cheap and available. Do quick and easy come into the equation. Well they can if you go canned chickpeas, but not if you are going to be a purist.
So now I'm going to look at the traditional Italian - nay Roman - in both senses of the word - dish of Pasta e ceci but also at some of the thousands and thousands of variations that are either equally old or very new.
I began all this because of a Rachel Roddy post about the traditional dish, that she claims is often a twice weekly dish in her Roman home. Above is her Guardian version of Pasta e ceci but there are two more - another traditional version of Pasta e ceci from her earlier blog Rachel Eats, and also a Quick pasta e ceci using canned chickpeas.
I'm pretty sure that none of these looks particularly tempting to you - or me come to that - a beige/brown pretty plain bowl of soup. And yet she is able to wax lyrical about this:
"a true everyman soup, the simplest soup, which transcends class and season, a soup to nourish and sustain all, the Steve Buscemi of soups, a bit of a legend, oh so low key you take him for granted, but love him so much more than all the fancy pants hogging the limelight." Rachel Roddy
Now I have never tried it, but maybe I should. After all a dish that has been sustaining the Romans since ancient times, must surely have something about it to love. Besides there are plenty of dishes that don't look that great but which have that undeniable moreish and comforting taste. Indeed Nigella - who cooks Anna del Conte's version, and has done for over 30 years - says of it:
"Small children love it, teenagers love it, fully fledged and ageing adults love it. I don’t really understand how you couldn’t."
So maybe I should try it. Well I did buy actual dried chickpeas recently for something, and I really should do something with them.
And still eaten on Fridays in Rome by the way - a day of no meat. So maybe I'll give it a go next Friday.
Rachel Roddy may well introduce us to the traditional dishes of Italy, but she is no purist - as her 'quick' version shows:
"Like so much good Italian cooking, the principles are clear: cooked chickpeas are added to some sort of soffritto, then water or chickpea broth is added and the soup simmered. Pasta is then added to the soup and cooked until tender. But beyond that, the variations are endless." Rachel Roddy
And indeed they are. So here is a quick tour. I'll begin with those that are not that far from the original - just a few extras thrown in: Nigel Slater's - Macaroni, chickpeas and tomato sauce; Meera Sodha's Ciceri e tria is the version they make in Puglia - the name is in the Puglian dialect I suspect; Quick pasta and chickpeas from Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen, which is based on Rachel Roddy's quick version; Chickpea, tomato and rosemary penne fom Rukimini Iyer, whose version includes tomatoes and does not have a great deal of sauce; and two which add sausage - Pisarei pasta with braised chickpea and sausage from Sylvia Colloca/delicious. and Chorizo and chickpea pappardelle from Hayden Quinn/delicious. delicious. by the way has many more variations.
Then there are the more extreme and sometimes way away from the original version. Maybe I should begin with Ottolenghi who, of course, has a few - the first of which is actually a Persian dish - it's Persian name is ash-e-reshteh, although he simply calls it Legume noodle soup and it does include other legumes. Number two Orrechiette cooked in chickpea and tomato sauce of which one of his colleagues said: "it’s not just cheating, it’s blasphemy". Then we are back to the Middle-East with Gigli with chickpeas and za'atar and finally the pasta is fried in Fried tagliatelle with chickpeas and tomatoes.
And finally from here and there: Spaghetti with chickpea and broccolini pesto - Sylvia Colloca; Chickpea bolognese - Phoebe Wood/delicious.; Prawn, chickpea and 'nduja pasta salad - Charlotte Binns-McDonald/delicious.; Chickpea pasta bake - Jack Rock/SBS
It's obviously the thing to play with. Maybe I'll start with the classic and then go from there. If I like it. Just a kind of list of a post but I was truly fascinated by the fact that this ingredient pairing seems to be popping up so frequently these days.
YEARS GONE BY
March 16
2023 - Nothing
2022 - Walnuts and barberries
2021 - Pork pies - uniquely English
2020 - Deleted
2018 - Boiled eggs
2017 - Cannoli
Did the Romans eat Chickpeas? Appatently so! Well there we are!