Zuppa di cicerchie (Grass Pea Soup)

Frank3 November 2018Marche, pastas, soups and risottos/primi piatti, Puglia, Rome and Lazio, Soups, Toscana, Umbria47 Comments

Yes, autumn is well and truly here. There’s a definitely chill in the air, the leaves are turning color, pumpkins have been placed on doorsteps, and logs are piled high on back porches, ready for the fire. I don’t know about you, but when the temperatures drop, I start to hanker for the heartier foods, none more than the warming soups of central Italy. Some of these rustic soups, especially the Tuscan ones like ribollita, laden with bread and beans and vegetables, have become world famous. Here on this site we’ve also featured some lesser known soups like farinata, made with Tuscan kale, as well as well known pasta and legume combinations like pasta e fagioli, pasta e ceci and pasta e piselli.

Today I want to present another soup in this category, one you may not heard of. Zuppa di cicerchia—said to be originally from Umbria but found in Tuscany, Le Marche, northern Lazio and Puglia, too—is made with the Lathyrus sativus, a nearly forgotten ancient pulse which goes by cicherchia in Italian and various names in English, most commonly the unappetizing “chickling vetch” or the ever so slightly more appealing “grass pea”.

The technique for making the soup will be familiar to anyone who knows Italian cooking. After soaking the cicerchie overnight and simmering them until tender, you make a flavor base of tomatoes simmered in gently sautéed aromatics, then add the cicerchie soak up the flavors, then add some of the cooking liquid (or broth) and let everything simmer for a good 15 minutes or so, until the flavors have entirely melded. With a few mashed cicherchie to thicken the soup and a drizzle of olive oil to enrich it, dinner is served. Like so much good Italian cooking, it’s utterly simple, and utterly satisfying.

Ingredients

Serves 4-6

For the initial simmering:

250g (8 oz) dried cicerhie
A clove or two of garlic, left whole
A bay leaf
Salt

For the soup:

1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
A sprig of rosemary (and a few sage leaves if you like)
200-250g (7-8 oz) canned tomatoes, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

For finishing the soup:

Rounds of toasted bread
Olive oil

Directions

Soak the cicerchie overnight. Drain and put them in a large pot with water to cover, together with a pinch of salt and a bay leaf. Simmer until tender. (Times will vary. see Notes)

Meanwhile, in a heavy saucepan, Dutch oven or terra-cotta pot, gently sauté the garlic and rosemary (and sage leaves if you’re using them) for a minute or two, until the garlic is just golden. Then add the chopped tomato and let it simmer for about 5 minutes, until it has thickened slightly. Remove the garlic and herbs.

When the circerchie are tender, drain them and add them to the pot, mixing well. Let them simmer for a few minutes to soak up the flavor of the tomato base. Then add a ladleful or so of the pot liquor, enough to cover, season generously with salt and pepper, and continue simmering for another 10-15 minutes or so, stirring from time to time. Just before serving, taste and adjust for seasoning.

If you like a thicker soup—and I do— crush some of the cicerchie against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Conversely, add more pot liquor if things get too thick for your taste.

Serve hot, drizzled if you like with some best-quality olive oil and some rounds of good crusty bread, toasted or (even better in my book) fried in olive oil.

Notes on zuppa di cicerchie

This is a simple recipe, obviously, with finding and simmering the cicerchie really the only tricky bit. I’ve never seen “grass peas” in any store in my area, but cicerchie imported from Umbria are available online.

As mentioned, the cooking time for cicerchie can vary a lot. Traditional recipes tell you to soak them 24 hours, then cook them for two hours. The package of the brand I bought (pictured below)called for an overnight soak and an hour and a half’s simmering. In fact, I got away with just over an hour. If you have one, cicherchie would be a perfect candidate for the pressure cooker. 15-20 minutes at high pressure, followed by a quick release should work well. And if you have a fancy electric pressure cooker like the Instant Pot, or the Breville Fast-Slow Cooker I have at home, use the “bean” setting. Just set it and forget it: the cooker automatically comes up to pressure, cooks, then releases at the press of a button. Magic…!

Variations

There’s a good deal of variation in the tomato base among recipes. Some use a classic soffritto of onion, carrot and celery instead of (or in addition to) garlic. Some recommend minced garlic and parsley. If you’re a carnivore, you may like the chopped pancetta or guanciale some recipes call for. Many recipes go lighter on the tomato than this one, in some cases rendering the dish practically in bianco although I’ve seen none totally devoid of tomato.

Broth can substitute for the cooking liquor for a meatier flavor. In some recipes, fennel fronds are added to the soup or to the cicerchie as they boil. Others call for mentuccia, a mint native to central Italy. (Wonderful with artichokes by the way.) If you want a even thicker soup, purée a third or more of the cicerhie. (A hand blender applied directly to the pot comes in handy here.)

Finally, for a starch, some recipes have you add pasta, as if you were making a pasta e ceci. Some add diced potato. In Tuscany they make a soup of cicerchie with farro.

The Story of the Cicerchia

The cicerchia is a kind of primitive chickpea, which it vaguely resembles, although it has a rather earthier taste. Said to have originated in prehistoric times in the Balkans, it was quite popular in Italy in the Middle Ages. The hearty, drought-resistant plant was a source of badly needed nutrition in times of famine. After falling out of favor in modern times due to the health risks—excess consumption can lead to lathyrism—the cicerchia has recently seen a revival in interest, most commonly for soups like this one or paired with pasta. In Abruzzo, they ground dried cicherchie to make a kind of polenta called fracchiata.

Italy is not the only country that enjoys this unusual pulse. It is eaten in Spain, where grass pea flour is used to make a kind of savory porridge called gachas manchegas. The grass pea is particularly popular in south west Asia and the eastern Horn of Africa, where it is cultivated for both human and livestock consumption. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, grass peas are eaten boiled or the flour used to make a flatbread bread known as ‘kitta’. And in India they are made into a kind of dahl or the flour used to make roti.

Print Recipe