Sicilian black chickpea 250 g

The ancestor of all cultivated chickpeas was Cicer reticulatum, domesticated 8,000 years ago in south-eastern Turkey and Syria. In dynastic Egypt it was used as energy food for the slaves who built pyramids and temples, but free people also knew it well as an aphrodisiac. In ancient Greece the chickpea’s reputation for strength was even in its name: “kikus”, meaning force. Hugely popular in Athens as in imperial Rome, chickpeas were sold very cheaply but were not considered food for the lower classes. Proof of this is the famous cookbook of Apicius, certainly not written for the poor, which includes a barley and chickpea soup and a pastry filled with leeks and chickpeas; perhaps the Sicilian ones that Columella (1st century AD) considered the very best. As a curiosity, the great Cicero, who served as quaestor in Sicily and knew Enna and the Rocca di Cerere well, said his family name came from an ancestor with a chickpea-shaped wart on his nose.

The poet Horace tells us that roasted or fried chickpeas were sold by street vendors on corners near theatres and circuses. Sicily still keeps the custom of the “scaccio”, the street snack known as “calìa e simenza” (chickpeas and pumpkin seeds). According to the Sicilian anthropologist Giuseppe Pitrè, until the early 1900s the poorer convents, which could not afford to make sweets, roasted chickpeas to hand out at fairs and feasts.

Black chickpeas are a lesser-known and less-used relative of the usual pale chickpeas. The plant grows and yields well on dry, stony, well-drained soils like those of the hills of inland Sicily. Besides their raven-black skin, they have an irregular shape, a wrinkled surface and a typical hook-shaped tip. Because of their tough skin, once dried they need at least 12 hours of soaking before being boiled for two hours; but it is well worth it, because their intense, herbaceous flavour is truly unique and surprising, especially when simply dressed with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.