trapped. If you could allow more people, what was wrong
with less? He was, momentarily, discombobulated.
February can be tough going. There is less fresh food in
the traditional seasonal calendar. I know that does not
matter much to the average supermarket shopper but to
those of us who look forward to the treats each season
brings, February is pretty much hard tack. There are
exceptions, such as the rhubarb featured below, but this
month marks the low point of the growing year, when
nothing has started to crop and stores are getting low.
No wonder we begin Lent now.
When times are tough, the cook gets cooking. The
paucity of ingredients requires careful handling. You
will need to have a good storecupboard. And you can
cheat a bit. I know red peppers are hardly winter food
but just occasionally you can go off piste. Some of these
recipes, like the first one, are exercises in minimalism,
dishes that require a bit of precision and a lot of
restraint. When less is more, in fact.
An Exercise in Minimalism
Pasta e Ceci
Soups are an exercise in minimalism. It is what you leave
out that is important. I have long argued that a good thing
to omit is stock – unless, of course, it is the key component:
vegetable soups and purées have a purer, cleaner flavour
when there is no stock involved. Old-fashioned cream
soups made from simple vegetables – celery, carrot,
cauliflower, for example – have a delicacy and definition
that many modern combinations lack. Many of the best
soups are so simple not just by virtue of a sense of
aesthetic purity, but also as a result of poverty.
Proper peasant soups are meals, not the first act of
a banquet. Sometimes a meat or chicken broth will be
fortified with bread, pasta, vegetables or dumplings.
Sometimes there is no broth but simply water: with an
egg and garlic in the Languedoc; beans and not much else
in Tuscany; or carrots, water and rice in Northern France.
However, these simple soups do not lack variety or
interest – just look what they do with chickpeas in Italy.
In Calabria, a chickpea soup will be chickpeas and
tomato. A little pork fat or bacon might be introduced in
some areas, while in others pasta is cooked in the soup.
Further north, in Rome, anchovies form part of the
aromatic base alongside garlic and rosemary before the
chickpeas, tomato purée and a little macaroni are added.
In Tuscany, the soup is rarely cooked without a substantial
dose of diced pancetta and a soffritto of carrot, celery and
onion. By the time you reach Milan, chickpea soup has
become positively sybaritic, with a good quantity of
pancetta and vegetables, a shredded pig’s head, a quantity
of butter and fresh herbs all enriching the mix. Each of
these soups is a deep, tomato homage to the chickpea.
When Alastair Little started running a cooking school
in Orvieto, he immersed himself in the gastronomic
culture and was not seen for months. When he resurfaced,
his greatest enthusiasm was for this chickpea soup, a
richly flavoured Tuscan version. At the time I confess I was
a little puzzled: although a good dish, it was, in the end,
just a simple soup. I was wrong. It is a remarkably subtle
and satisfying dish, and getting the balance of flavours and
the cooking of the pasta just right does require a small
degree of concentration. This is a simple version with no
meat at all, perfect for these Lenten days.
47
February
PASTA E CECI
Cooking the chickpeas yourself is preferable both
economically and on grounds of taste, but if you want to
make this a storecupboard standby there are excellent
bottled or tinned chickpeas available, which allow this recipe
to be made in 25 minutes: you’ll need about 1kg (2lb 4oz).
Serves six to eight.
500g (1lb 2oz) dried
chickpeas
1 large red chilli
a few sprigs of rosemary
50ml (13⁄4fl oz) olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and
very finely chopped
1 carrot, peeled and very
finely chopped
1 celery stick, very finely
chopped
3 garlic cloves, peeled and
