Massa e ciceri, Massa di San Giuseppe, Ciceri e Trìa, are several names for this representative dish of traditional Salento cuisine.
We had already covered this ancient recipe, reinterpreted by IvanTronci, about a month ago(Ciceri e Trìa revisited: the Salento cuisine of Ivan Tronci).
Now the time has come to tell and talk to you about the traditional recipe, without variations on the theme.
We will try to take you on a journey into the past, into a peasant past, when in the land of Salento, grandchildren admired their grandmothers as they prepared St. Joseph’s Mass.
Virtually grab your bags and follow us!
The ingredients of Ciceri e Trìa: what it is
Ciceri e trìa is an ancient, traditional dish from Salento made of chickpeas and homemade noodle-like pasta. Along with the two main ingredients, you have to embellish the aroma of the dish with vegetables and “smells” of our land, such as:
- garlic cloves (without exaggerating if you are preparing something for someone you love);
- celery;
- parsley;
- garlic;
- onion;
- bay leaves;
- black pepper to be freshly ground;
- pendola tomatoes, seedless and peeled of the skin.
Although this is a simple, poor dish, the execution of the recipe requires great care.
Just follow the right tips and do everything flawlessly to serve this goodness on the tables of your homes.
Ciceri e Trìa: how to prepare it
Start the day before with the preparation, soaking the chickpeas in a large pot.
The next day, drain the chickpeas, rinse them and put them to cook in a pot.
It would be even more traditional, to cook these first fruits of mother nature, directly in an earthenware piñata, perhaps in front of a lit and red-hot home fireplace (lu focarile).
Arrived halfway through cooking, eliminate a fair amount of water and add the vegetables and herbs
that we have indicated to you among the ingredients.
In a separate frying pan, pour in some Olio Evo del Salento and throw in a couple of cloves of garlic to brown them.Once they are browned, remove them and make room in the pan for the strips of homemade pasta that you made earlier.
When these homemade pasta strips turn golden brown, you can turn off the skillet.
In a pot, pour in plenty of salted water and pour in the rest of the homemade pasta. When it comes to a boil, drain, not completely, the pasta, which should preferably be al dente.
Add the chickpeas with all the cooking broth to the pasta, left in the pot.Bring everything to a boil.
The magic happens now, when you add some of the fried pasta to the pot and keep a small amount aside to garnish your dishes.
Plate and sprinkle with a pinch of freshly ground black pepper.
Enjoy your meal with this typical Salento recipe!
