Italian traditional recipe: Ciceri e tria

…just to be clear about Ciceri e tria: here at Lecce in our dialect ‘Tria’ is the name of the fresh tagliatella, the handmade pasta without eggs. ‘Ciceri’ are chickpeas.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Ciceri e tria, or maybe you’ve had the great fortune of tasting it.
It is an experience that must be had at least once in your lifetime. If you are lucky enough to have a grandmother, an aunt, … or a friend who has a grandmother (or an aunt), who knows how to prepare it, let me give you some advice: take advantage of it.

But if you don’t have such luck, you could find your salvation by dining at a traditional restaurant in Lecce. Better of course, if the restaurant is Alle Due Corti Restaurant, where the Ciceri e tria are prepared following the authentic recipe from ages past.

An Italian traditional recipe: Ciceri e Tria

Ok, however, I understand if you don’t have a Holiday planned in Lecce in the near future. So, here is the solution: I’ll give you useful information on how to prepare this legendary dish with its unique characteristics.

The only things that you need are these: to have an intense desire to do it well, a good guide that simply puts you on the right path with useful tips, but most of all … a yearning to eat fabulous dishes.
First of all, remember that Ciceri e tria is a traditional Salento dish, made with fresh handmade tria pasta.

Here, for convenience, let’s start by considering the freshly pre-prepared pasta. If you don’t really want (or you don’t have time!) to ‘get your hands dirty’ with flour, you could buy good fresh pasta. Remember, however, that it must be a fresh tagliatella (to us tria) pasta prepared without eggs. The traditional gastronomy of Salento has its roots and its beauty in impoverishment. Even eggs would not have been available every day.

Just follow these recommendations

Most importantly: see below, I’ll show you what you must have, fresh and uncooked.

At Alle due corti Restaurant, we prefer the size of pasta that you see in the picture above, but other recipes include a larger size, up to 2 centimeters wide! So, make your choice.

That said, don’t lose heart, fine cooking is a skill and not a superpower!

We have fresh pasta, about 500 grams. You also need about 300 grams of boiled chickpeas, cooked in salt water with a tomato squeezed from the seed, an onion cut in two pieces, a whole clove of garlic and two stalks of celery. However, consider that the chickpeas must be soaked for several hours before being cooked for about 1 hour.

Even here, if you really want to avoid any stress, you can buy chickpeas in a can, or better in glass jar. But please, try to prepare chickpeas by yourself, it would be far superior.

How may I help you?

If you want, wherever you are, I’ll come and help you: Ciceri e tria is such an important dish that it deserves a little effort and organization.

The pasta preparation is split into two different cooking procedures: frying and boiling. These must be done simultaneously, so before starting, read the article right through to the end to understand how to organize your cooking session.

First of all in a large pot, bring water to a boil, then drop in half of the tria pasta, adjusting it to taste with salt.

The core of the recipe:

While the tria cooks in boiling water, let’s start preparing the fried half of the pasta.

Choose the frying pan carefully, its size must be large enough to accommodate all the other ingredients. So, when the fried tria are ready, after removing the pieces of garlic from the oil, drain the remaining boiled half of the tria from the water and mix it to fried pasta in the same pan. At the same time, add the boiled chickpeas.

Slowly mix everything and crush a few of the chickpeas with a fork, just to crmosteate a cooking cream from the mixture of oil and pulp of the chickpeas

The dish is ready in a few minutes. If you want to spike the flavour a bit, you can serve the hot dish dusted with some black pepper to taste.

Here are the ingredients for the recipe you just read.

Ciceri e tria, the recipe – Ingredients for 3 people:

500 gr. of fresh handmade tagliatella (without eggs);

300 gr. of boiled chickpeas;

½ tumbler of Extravirgin Olive Oil;

1 clove of garlic;

black pepper;

salt.

Therefore, if you find any difficulty, or have any kind of doubts, ask me in the comments … I really do care so much that this dish is prepared to perfection.

Indeed just look! I’ll tell you already: if you follow my advice … the pure flavours will come out fantastically!