Chickpea Farinata

This beautiful and simple recipe comes from Genova. It’s a thin pancake, made out of chickpea flour, water, olive oil and salt. Traditionally you would cook it in a woodfired oven.

The story of this dish is really old, and people say that it was invented by mistake. Around 1250 the city of Genova and Pisa were battling against each other. Genova won and, on the way back the ships encountered a big storm. Some barrels carrying chickpea flour and olive oil overturned due to the weather. As a result, the content of the barrels got mixed with sea water.
Food supplies were scarce so the sailors tried to save as much as they could and dried out the mix under the sun creating a sort of pancake. This is how the Farinata was born!

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Beyond hummus

Ingredients

150gr chickpea flour (gram flour)
400ml water
40ml extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp of salt
Rosemary

Cooking time & people

5min to prepare
3h rest
25min in the oven
These quantities make 1 farinata tray of 28cm diameter

 Step by step

• Mix the water and chickpea flour in a bowl. If while you are mixing you notice some froth on the top of your mixture get rid of it with a spoon

• Your mixture should be very liquid

• Cover you bowl and set aside for 3 hours. Every 30min stir

•  After 3 hours add the oil, salt and stir well

•  Coat an aluminium baking tin (28cm diameter) with olive oil and pour the mixture in. Add a few rosemary leaves on top

•  Cook as follows:
  In a preheated oven 250° for 10min at the bottom of the oven. Turn down the temperature to 200° and move the tray in the middle of the oven. Cook for 15min

• Let it cool down for a few minutes and enjoy!

Tips & cheats

Don’t use a tin with a removable bottom or the mixture will come out while cooking. If you don’t have a tin with a fixed bottom, make sure you use parchment paper.

If you feel it’s stuck, don’t worry. Let it cool down a bit and you should be able to slice it and take it out of the tin easily.

 This is easy to warm up in the microwave and it won’t affect its texture or flavour.

 The farinata is meant to be really thin. Approximately 5mm, so don’t panic if it looks flat in the oven.