Ciceri e tria (Pasta and Chickpeas)

Here’s a simple dish from Puglia, and more specifically from the Salento, at the very heel of the Italian boot. If you had to sum it up in a couple of words, you’d say ciceri e tria was pasta and chickpeas. And you’d be right, but you’d also be missing out on what makes this dish unique. Tria is the Pugliese name for a local ribbon shaped pasta, much less known than orecchiette or cavatelli but equally treasured by the locals. Made from semolina flour and water, tria is often translated as “tagliatelle”, but they are actually quite different. You make them without eggs and cut them into ribbons rather thicker, wider and shorter than tagliatelle. In a word, tria is more “rustic”, with a chewier and more substantial mouthfeel and a pleasantly nutty flavor. But what makes ciceri e tria really stand out is the cooking technique. As far as I know, it is unique in Italian cookery. You take a third to a half of the pasta and, instead of boiling it, you shallow fry it until golden brown. You boil the rest as usual. Then you mix the fried tria with simply cooked chickpeas and the boiled pasta. Or, more often, you place all or a part of the fried tria on top for decoration. The diner can mix things up themselves as they tuck into the dish. The combination of textures—the creamy chickpeas, the chewy boiled tria and crispy fried tria—is a real knock out. No wonder the Pugliesi treasure ciceri e tria as an icon of their regional cookery. What’s surprising is, the dish is so little known elsewhere. Ciceri e tria are traditional for St. Joseph’s Day on March 19, but it’s a dish you can happily eat year round. It’s just that good. Ingredients Serves 4-6 To cook the chickpeas: 250g (1/2 lb) dried chickpeasA medium onion, cut in half1-2 carrots1-2 stalks of celeryA bay leafA sprig of thymeSaltTo make the pasta: 300 g (10 oz) finely ground semolina flour (semola rimacinata) WaterSaltTo finish the dish: 1-2 cloves of garlic, slightly crushed and peeled1-2 peperoncini or a pinch of red pepper flakesOlive oilSalt and pepperA few cherry tomatoes, split in two (optional) Directions Soak the dried chickpeas overnight, ideally 12 hours or more. Drain. Put the chickpeas in a large pot (traditionally it would be a tall terracotta pot called a pignata) and cover with water by about five fingers. Add the rest of the listed ingredients . Bring to a simmer and cook over gentle heat until the chickpeas are tender. (In the alternative, cook under pressure for 20-30 minutes and let cool naturally.) Mix the flour and salt, then add in enough water to make a pliable but firm dough. Knead for a good five minutes until you have a perfectly smooth ball of dough. Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest for 15 minutes. Uncover the pasta and roll it out, but not too thinly, into a sheet or sheets about 3mm thick. (If you’re using a pasta machine or attachment, this corresponds to the 3 setting.) Set aside to dry. When the pasta has dried out enough that it has lost any stickiness, cut the sheets into strips about 10-15 cm/4-6 inches long. To finish the dish, in a large braiser or sauté pan, gently sauté the garlic and hot pepper until the garlic is just beginning to brown around the edges. If using the cherry tomatoes, add them now and let them melt a bit in the scented oil. Then, with a slotted spoon, transfer the chickpeas to the scented oil, and turn them to coat them well with the oil. Simmer for a few minutes. Add enough of the chickpeas’ cooking liquid so that the chickpeas are just covered. Continue simmering, crushing some of the chickpeas against the side of the pan so they melt into and thicken the liquid. Taste and adjust for seasoning. While the chickpeas are simmering. take about 1/3 of the tria and fry them until golden brown in abundant olive oil, in a skillet wide enough to hold them all in a single layer. If need be, proceed in batches. As they brown, transfer the fried pasta to a plate lined with paper towels to drain. Take the remaining pasta and cook it briefly in well salted water, in the usual manner. Drain the boiled pasta and transfer it to the pan with the simmering chickpeas. Mix everything well, adding another ladleful of the chickpea cooking liquid if things look a bit dry. Serve, topped with the fried pasta, and serve right away. Notes on Ciceri e tria Regular readers know that I’m not adverse at all to convenience foods when I can. But this is one dish you’ll want to make from scratch. Since they have minimal seasoning, the chickpeas themselves need to really shine. And, in any event, as you will have read, their cooking liquid is an important part of the condimento for the pasta. The pasta, too, should be homemade. Much of the charm of the dish lies in the nuttiness and chewiness of the semolina, and you won’t get that from tagliatelle or other store bought pasta. But I take advantage of time-saving technology when I make the pasta by hand. I use a standing mixer for making the dough, then I use attachments for rolling it out and cutting it up into strips. I use the fettuccine attachment, even if fettucine is a bit narrower than tria typically is. (See my post on homemade pasta for details.) Yes, it’s a bit of a process, but no special skills are required. And you’ll really taste the difference. Speaking of the pasta, be sure to use the finely ground semolina flour called semola rimacinata di grano duro in Italian. Most semolina flour sold here in the US is rather coarsely ground. It’s what you want for making gnocchi alla romana but it’s not ideal for pasta, lending an unpleasant gritty texture to it. I never did understand why it caught on as a pasta flour. But as a result, finely ground semolina flour is exceedingly rare to find in stores, but you can buy it imported from amazon.com an outlet like gustiamo.com. Variations While most well known Italian dishes come in variations, the number of variations on ciceri e tria are truly mindblogging. To begin with, the aromatics you cook the chickpeas with. Some recipes call for onion only, others for onion and celery, others like this one the whole “trinity” of onion, celery and carrot, plus herbs. In some cases, a bit of oil is added too. Tomato is optional, as indicated, but bear in mind if you do tomato, use just a bit. Most renditions of ciceri e tria are entirely in bianco. In many recipes, probably the more traditional ones I surmise, you add the pasta—the portion you don’t fry, that is—directly to the pot where you’ve simmered the chickpeas and finish the dish from there. You save dirtying two additional pots, personally, I like this recipe, which allows you to flavor the chickpeas in a soffritto while eliminating the excess starch by parboiling the pasta separately before mixing them with the chickpeas. The ratio of chickpea to pasta also varies enormously. And, as mentioned, recipes will also vary on how much of the pasta gets fried vs boiled. It can be as little as just a handful or as much as half. And you can decide how much of the fried pasta you mix with the rest of the dish and how much you reserve as topping. In some recipes, all the fried pasta gets mixed in, in others a portion and in yet others (like this one) all the fried pasta gets placed on top. And then, the tria itself can vary a bit in length and width and thickness. And finally in some recipes, the pasta you plan to fry gets made extra wide, then twisted into pretty spirals, a bit like chiacchiere, and placed on top of the pasta. Extra pretty! Print Recipe Ciceri e tria Pugliese style pasta and chickpeas IngredientsTo cook the chickpeas250g 1/2 lb dried chickpeas 1 medium onion cut in half 1-2 carrots 1-2 stalks of celery A bay leaf A sprig of thyme SaltTo make the pasta300g 10 oz finely ground semolina flour (semola rimacinata)WaterSaltTo finish the dish1-2 cloves of garlic slightly crushed and peeled 1-2 peperoncini or a pinch of red pepper flakes Olive oil Salt and pepper A few cherry tomatoes split in two (optional) InstructionsSoak the dried chickpeas overnight, ideally 12 hours or more. Drain.Put the chickpeas in a large pot (traditionally it would be a tall terracotta pot called a pignata) and cover with water by about five fingers. Add the rest of the listed ingredients . Bring to a simmer and cook over gentle heat until the chickpeas are tender. (In the alternative, cook under pressure for 20-30 minutes and let cool naturally.) Mix the flour and salt, then add in enough water to make a pliable but firm dough. Knead for a good five minutes until you have a perfectly smooth ball of dough. Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest for 15 minutes. Uncover the pasta and roll it out, but not too thinly, into a sheet or sheets about 3mm thick. (If you're using a pasta machine or attachment, this corresponds to the 3 setting.) Set aside to dry. When the pasta has dried out enough that it has lost any stickiness, cut the sheets into strips about 10-15 cm/4-6 inches long. To finish the dish, in a large braiser or sauté pan, gently sauté the garlic and hot pepper until the garlic is just beginning to brown around the edges. If using the cherry tomatoes, add them now and let them melt a bit in the scented oil. Then, with a slotted spoon, transfer the chickpeas to the scented oil, and turn them so they are well covered with the oil. Simmer for a few minutes. Add enough of the chickpeas' cooking liquid so that the chickpeas are just covered. Continue simmering, crushing some of the chickpeas against the side of the pan so they melt into and thicken the liquid. Taste and adjust for seasoning. While the chickpeas are simmering. take about 1/3 of the tria and fry them until golden brown in abundant olive oil, in a skillet wide enough to hold them all in a single layer. If need be, proceed in batches. As they brown, transfer the fried pasta to a plate lined with paper towels to drain.Take the remaining pasta and cook it briefly in well salted water, in the usual manner. Drain the boiled pasta and transfer it to the pan with the simmering chickpeas. Mix everything well, adding another ladleful of the chickpea cooking liquid if things look a bit dry. Serve, topped with the fried pasta, and serve right away. Enter your email address below and you'll receive new posts in your inbox as soon as they're published, at absolutely no charge. You'll never miss another recipe! Leave this field empty if you're human: Share is caring!Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Related And you might also like... 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