Torta di Ceci and Other Chickpea Delights

By Solveig Steinhardt

Socca, as it’s called in Nice, is part of the local street food traditions of many Mediterranean port cities, especially in Italy and France. Photo by Myrabella / Wikimedia Commons.

It’s called torta di ceci in Livorno, cecina in Pisa, farinata or fainé in Genoa, socca in Nice, and the fried version from Sicily is called pane e panelle. These are all the different names of the baked, chickpea-flour-base, tortilla-like pie that is part of the local street food traditions of many Mediterranean port cities, especially in Italy and France, though there’s a northern Moroccan version, called kalinti, that has Sephardic Jewish origins. 

As often happens when recipes are shared across regions, each city claims its own to be the original and best version, but regardless of the different names and various serving styles, these pies are all quite similar. All of them are made with fine chickpea flour soaked in water for a few hours to form a liquid mix, which is then baked. For best results, the pie needs to be cooked at very high temperatures in a pizza oven (or in frying oil in its Sicilian version), but many people like to make it at home in their regular ovens and, they’ll swear, the results are more than satisfying. 

In the Tuscan port city of Livorno, eating a sandwich with torta di ceci is a daily routine for many, and “torterie” dot the city center. According to the high standards of Gagarin, a nondescript, signless “hole in the wall” torta maker near the city’s food market, torta has to be crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, and it should be served steaming hot right out of the wood-fired oven, with lots of pepper on top. The luxury version also includes a side of extra-garlicky, spicy, fried aubergines that make it all the more greasy, but all the more delicious as well. 

Some 300 kilometers north of Livorno, Genoese farinata is sold as an alternative to takeaway pizza, while in northern Sardinia, fainé is sometimes baked with anchovies or onion. The Sicilian variant consists of fried chickpea pieces served in bread, a common market food, served hot even in the scorching summer temperatures. In Palermo, a sweet version is filled with vanilla cream and served with powdered sugar as part of the celebrations for Saint Lucia’s day on December 13. 

In recent years, these chickpea flour pies have also gained extra popularity among vegans for their high protein content and satisfying consistency. According to some, farinata gives the same protein-induced joy as an egg frittata.

Sicilian variant consists of fried chickpea pieces served in bread, a common market food, served hot even in the scorching summer temperatures. Photo by Dedda71, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Chickpeas have been an important food in the Mediterranean for millennia. Thought to be one of the first domesticated plants in the region, the legume has been used since the Bronze Age, with historical records showing the existence of chickpea cultivations in ancient Egypt, as well as in Greece and in the Roman empire. But if many recipes from those times mention chickpea purees cooked in the oven, there seems to be no real evidence from back then of the use of chickpea flour, which is derived from crushed, dried chickpeas. 

According to Sicilians, the use of chickpea flour was inherited by the Arabs, who conquered Sicily and lived in the island between the 9th and the 11th centuries, while the northern Mediterranean cities trace the birth of this recipe back to a specific historical event: the Battle of Meloria, a sea battle between the maritime republics of Genoa and Pisa and that took place off the coast of Livorno in 1284. During the conflict, a storm caused some barrels of oil and some boxes of dried chickpeas to spill over and get mixed together with the salt water that was entering the ship. In order not to waste the food in the middle of a war, the sailors blended the mix and cooked it, but many refused to eat it and left it in the sun until the next day, when they finally realized how delicious it tasted. When the Genoese won the battle, the sailors returned home with the intention, legend has it, to improve the recipe by cooking it in the oven. And when they realized how valuable their discovery was, they called it “l’oro di Pisa,” or “the gold of Pisa.”  

Like all legends, this too may bear some narrative exaggeration, but one thing is certain: This food’s distribution around the coasts of the Mediterranean, and mainly in cities with large ports and with sea connections with each other seems to confirm the recipe’s maritime origin, and thanks to Genoa’s intense maritime relations across the Mediterranean and beyond, farinata has reached the most important port cities in the basin, but also the more distant destinations of Italian immigration. 

Today, a version called fainá is considered by some a national dish in Uruguay and Argentina, where it is sometimes mixed with cheese and typically served as a pizza topping on what is known as “pizza a caballo,” reportedly one of the foods Pope Francis misses the most from his native Buenos Aires.

While the Livornese torta di ceci is normally served plain on a plate, it also famously comes in a sandwich known as 5 e 5, (“cinque e cinque”), which back in the day stood for “5-lire-worth of bread and 5-lire-worth of torta.” Today that would be more like €3. For the Livornese the “5 e 5” sandwich embodies the free, easygoing and informal spirit of the city. And to show their appreciation for their iconic street food, the city’s inhabitants even created a day for it, the aptly chosen May 5, when all “torterie” come together to offer a sandwich plus a spuma, the local soft drink, for just €2.