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Lagane e Ceci (Pasta & Chickpea Soup)

  Lagane e Ceci is a well-known southern Italian dish whose roots stem from ancient times when legumes were the staple ingredients, easily accessible with a very long shelf life.  Chickpeas, beans or lentils were alternated and cooked with hand made pasta, feeding the whole family.  This soup is made with dried chickpeas and hand-made ribbons of eggless pasta, but can also be made with  canned chickpeas which are just as good,  and  a short store-bought pasta like ditaletti. Mamma would make it this way when she was time poor.   We however preferred this soup with home-made pasta, rendering it more creamy. Lagane are believed to be the ancestors of today’s lasagne and the oldest form of pasta. The word lagane , like lasagna , comes from ancient Greece where it was used to describe a pasta made of flour and water, cooked on a stone, and then cut into strips. The Roman statesman  Cicero wrote about his passion for the Laganum  or laganas  and the Roman poet Horace, whose writings a

Sicilian Antique Forms for Cotognata


In my previous post Quince-Mela Cotogna I spoke about how to make cotognata and the clay forms that my mother in law would use for moulding the quince paste, adding character to the finished product. These moulds came all the way from Sicily with my in laws when they migrated to Australia.


Similar moulds to these were used in ancient times to give shape and form to the quince paste, which are still made and used in Sicily today.  They have various images such as fish, animals, flowers, landscapes as well as religious decorations probably a Spanish influence as a result of the Spanish occupation in Sicily around 1700.








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