Regional Recipe
Lagane e Ceci
Handmade wide noodles with chickpeas
This is handmade pasta with chickpeas: wide noodles made from just flour and water, then finished in the pan with the beans.
Tested and written by Erika A. Cochran
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Prep
30 minutes, plus soaking
Cook
40 minutes
Serves
4–6
Difficulty
Moderate
Region
Southern Italy
What you’ll need
Ingredients
Written for 4–6.
Showing quantities at 1× the original recipe.
- 1¾ cups durum wheat semola rimacinata
- ⅔ cup warm water
- 1¼ cups dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
- 4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 3 garlic cloves, crushed
- 1 sprig rosemary
- 1 dried chilli (optional)
- Sea salt
At the stove
Instructions
Drain the chickpeas and simmer them in unsalted water for 1–1½ hours until tender. Salt them at the end and keep the cooking water.
Work the semola and water into a firm dough. Knead for 10 minutes, cover, and rest for 30 minutes.
Roll the dough out thin and cut it into strips roughly ¾ inch wide and 3⅛ inches long.
Warm the oil with the garlic, rosemary and chilli, then add most of the chickpeas with a ladle of their water. Crush a few against the pan to thicken it.
Boil the lagane in salted water for 3–4 minutes, then move them straight into the chickpeas with some of the pasta water.
Toss over the heat for a minute so the sauce clings, then finish with raw olive oil.
Recipe notes
The dough is flour and water only — no egg. It should feel firm, not soft.
Crushing part of the chickpeas is what makes the sauce hold onto the pasta.
Context
Lagane are among the oldest documented pasta shapes in southern Italy, and pairing them with chickpeas is a long-established household dish across Calabria, Basilicata and Campania.
Sources: Editorial adaptation of documented southern Italian regional cooking, Casa Magnelli Kitchen
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