Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 1 cup cicerchia beans
• olive oil
• 6 oz. strained roasted tomatoes (thawed, since they were made last year and frozen)
• one large clove of garlic, or two small, minced
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 6 mint leaves, broken into small pieces with your hands
• water
• 1 cup / 240 ml homemade light chicken stock or vegetable option
• sea salt and freshly milled black pepper, to taste

For the variation

• quadrucci (see below)
• freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Instructions

Note: If you don’t have cicerchie, the soup can be made with chickpeas

Soak the cicerchie for 24 hours in 4 cups of water then drain and discard the water.

Put in a saucepan and pour water to a level above the cicerchie. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat. Simmer, covered, until tender. Check the progress periodically. Also, during cooking, some of the cicerchie lose their skin: you can discard it.

Warm a bit of olive oil in another saucepan, then add garlic and herbs. Cook for a minute or so, stirring, until the garlic smells fragrant, then add the strained tomatoes. Cook into a sauce. In my case, about 8 minutes.

Add the cooked cicerchie and let cook in the tomato sauce for 10 minutes, then add the stock plus enough water to make a soup of desired consistency.

Continue cooking for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

Variation:

Cook some quadrucci (small squares of egg pasta) in the soup (this only takes a few minutes). Before serving it, distribute some Parmigiano-Reggiano on the top.

Go to the full post on minestra di cicerchie / cicerchia soup