Typical Italian dish, chick pea soup has been poor people’s food for centuries all over the country. It is considered a full meal, as it is nourishing, full of proteins and poor in calories. It is still very popular in southern Italy and Liguria, where chickpea-growing is more abundant. Presumably originally hailing from Turkey, chickpeas spread quickly throughout the Mediterranean area, where they have been grown for thousand years.
The Roman statesman, philosopher and writer Marcus Tullius Cicero owed his name to… a chickpea (cicer in Latin), inherited from an ancestor who had a small lump on his nose in the shape of a chickpea ...
Chickpeas are now among the most widely farmed legumes in the world, so try this simple and tasty recipe of a typically Italian chickpea soup!

INGREDIENTS (serves 4 people)
150 g of chickpeas
1 carrot
1 white onion
1 stalk of celery
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 tablespoon of tomato sauce
4-5 sage leaves
rosemary
1 clove of garlic
8 slices of toasted bread salt
pepper

Soak the chickpeas for 24 hours. Chop up the celery, carrot and onion and fry them in a large pot for a few minutes with a little oil. Then add in the tomato sauce, the chickpeas, a clove of minced garlic, sage, rosemary, and salt. Keep stirring until everything is well mixed. When the chickpeas have taken on some flavour, pour water into the soup, cover the pan with a lid and let it simmer on low flame for about two hours on a Bertazzoni burner. Before serving, garnish with a sprig of rosemary, a trickle of olive oil and a sprinkling of pepper. Serve your chickpea soup with a couple of slices of toasted bread.