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Cicerale chickpea

Slow Food Presidium · PAT · Fruit, vegetables and pulses · Campania

Apulica editorial team · Sources checked:

In brief

History and origin

The chickpea, a pulse that arrived from western Asia thousands of years ago, found an ideal home on the hills around Cicerale, a small village on the first foothills of the Cilento. Chickpeas used to alternate with wheat and other cereals, giving farmers' diets a good share of protein.

The bond is written in the village's name and coat of arms. The municipal crest shows a chickpea plant intertwined with a grass and the motto terra quae cicera alit, the land that feeds chickpeas: a sign of important production as far back as the Middle Ages, and perhaps the very origin of the name Cicerale.

The almost ritual growing rules have stayed the same over time. Today the cultivated area has shrunk to a few dozen hectares and only a few growers keep the original seed: the Slow Food Presidium supports them, and the chickpea is listed among Campania's traditional products.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Cicerale · Regione Campania — Prodotti tradizionali: Cece di Cicerale · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)

Area and method of production

The chickpea is grown on the hills of Cicerale, in the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park. The plant is small and semi-prostrate and needs no water: it is grown without irrigation and without chemicals, following organic farming principles.

The harvest, at the end of July, is hard work. When the seed is ripe the by now dry plants are pulled up and left to dry in the field. They are then laid on jute sacks, covered and beaten with heavy wooden sticks, or threshed with a small hand-fed thresher set up beside the field; finally the seeds are separated from the pods by winnowing.

The rough terrain and pods growing very close to the ground rule out self-propelled harvesters. The Presidium's rules require seed to be saved within the family and a register of the plots used.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Cicerale · Regione Campania — Prodotti tradizionali: Cece di Cicerale

How to recognise it

The Cicerale chickpea is small and round, slightly more golden and darker than ordinary chickpeas, with light hazel tones. Its flavour is intense.

It is harvested with little moisture, which is why it keeps for a long time: dried, it is available all year round.

It swells considerably when cooked, a feature well known to local cooks. It is a hardy pulse, the product of difficult land and largely manual work. It can be recognised by its small, regular shape and warm colour; the seed is that of the original local variety, which growers reproduce within the family from generation to generation, choosing each year what to sow again.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Cicerale · Regione Campania — Prodotti tradizionali: Cece di Cicerale

In the kitchen

In local cooking it goes into many recipes: chickpeas cooked in a small pan, ravioli with chickpea cream and even sugared chickpeas, a sweet preparation. Its intense flavour and the way it swells as it cooks make it well suited to slow cooking.

Like all the pulses of the farming tradition, it accompanied cereals in everyday meals, and today it is one of the flavours of the Cilento, the land where Ancel and Margaret Keys studied the eating habits they called the Mediterranean Diet.

Since 2010 the Mediterranean Diet has been UNESCO intangible cultural heritage, partly for the practices handed down in the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park: growing, cooking and sharing food.

Sources: Regione Campania — Prodotti tradizionali: Cece di Cicerale · Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Cicerale · Parco Nazionale del Cilento, Vallo di Diano e Alburni — Dieta Mediterranea

Where to taste it

The place is Cicerale, a hill village in the Cilento, where the municipal crest with its chickpea plant greets visitors. The harvest takes place in July, but dried chickpeas can be found all year from the Presidium's few growers.

The village also lies within the production area of the Carciofo di Paestum PGI: a link that joins the hills of Cicerale with the Sele plain and the temples of Paestum.

A Cilento itinerary can thus combine the flavours of inland pulses with the coast and with the places of the Mediterranean Diet, such as Pollica, where the Keys lived and worked from 1944.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Cicerale · Qualigeo — Carciofo di Paestum IGP · Parco Nazionale del Cilento, Vallo di Diano e Alburni — Dieta Mediterranea

Protection

When

Where

Campania