APULICA / FRUIT, VEGETABLES AND PULSES
Teano chickpea
Slow Food Presidium · Fruit, vegetables and pulses · Campania
In brief
- A small, hazel-coloured chickpea with thin, wrinkled skin, also called the small curly chickpea; it is grown around Teano, Sessa Aurunca, Roccamonfina and other towns near Caserta. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano)
- It has a strong, savoury flavour and swells a lot when cooked. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano)
- The classic dish is hand-cut tagliolini with chickpeas, tomato and black-pig sausage. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano)
History and origin
In the countryside around Teano, in upper Caserta province, chickpeas have always been grown for family use. Until the 1960s they were a staple of farm cooking: they went into soups and purées and were cooked with home-made pasta.
As farming changed, only a few growers kept the seed and went on sowing it. The Slow Food Presidium has given the recovery a push: new producers have joined the custodians, taking up both seed saving and cultivation.
Even so, this heirloom variety is still at risk. The Presidium aims to increase production by involving more growers and to make the Teano chickpea known on the local market and in the area's restaurants.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano · Slow Food Foundation — Teano chickpea Presidium
Area and method of production
The Presidium covers the municipalities of Teano, Carinola, Sessa Aurunca, Francolise, Caianello, Vairano, Pietravairano and Roccamonfina, in the province of Caserta: an area that partly spreads over the slopes of the extinct Roccamonfina volcano.
The plant is very hardy and stands up well to winter cold, drought and disease. It can be sown in spring, between March and April, but more often it is sown in autumn: growth takes longer, but the yield is higher. It is grown in rotation with green-manure crops, mostly cereals such as rye, barley and wheat.
Harvest runs from the end of July to the end of August. It is done with a combine harvester, or the yellowed, nearly dry plants are pulled up, left to finish drying in the field and then threshed, by machine or by beating them with wooden sticks.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano · Regione Campania — Prodotti tradizionali: castagna paccuta e tempestiva del vulcano di Roccamonfina
How to recognise it
The Teano chickpea is small and hazelnut-coloured, with a thin skin and a wrinkled surface: hence its other name, cece piccolo riccio, the small curly chickpea.
Its flavour is intense and savoury, less sweet than other varieties. The seeds swell greatly as they cook.
Dried, it keeps all year, so it can be found well outside the harvest season, which falls between July and August. The seed is the one kept for decades by a few custodian farmers and now also reproduced by the Presidium's new growers, who ensure its continuity.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano · Slow Food Foundation — Teano chickpea Presidium
In the kitchen
The best-known traditional dish is hand-rolled tagliolini dressed with chickpeas, a loose tomato sauce and sausage made from the black pigs of Teano.
In farm cooking the chickpea also went into soups and purées, and was cooked together with home-made pasta: simple dishes in which its bold flavour gives character.
Because it swells a great deal when cooked, a little goes a long way; dried, it keeps in the larder all year. Until the 1960s it was the basis of many everyday meals in the area's farming families, and the Presidium is bringing it back into local restaurant kitchens.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano · Slow Food Foundation — Teano chickpea Presidium
Where to taste it
Look for the Teano chickpea in the Presidium villages, around Teano, Sessa Aurunca and Roccamonfina, where producers sell it on the local market and are bringing it back into restaurants.
This is the same land as the Castagna di Roccamonfina PGI: around the extinct volcano chestnut groves shape the landscape, and the Teano area, on the south-western side, is where the Paccuta chestnut is mostly grown.
A trip between late summer and autumn can combine the two: freshly harvested chickpeas and the chestnut season, with the Sagra della Castagna di Roccamonfina that the town has organised since 1976, heir to the old chestnut market.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano · Regione Campania — Prodotti tradizionali: castagna paccuta e tempestiva del vulcano di Roccamonfina · Regione Campania — Prodotti tipici: Castagna di Roccamonfina IGP
Protection
- Slow Food Presidium — cece-di-teano (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano)
When
- Harvest: July–August (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Cece di Teano)
- Summer