Campi Flegrei "Cicerchia"

Cicerchia is a pod, already known and appreciated by old Romans with the name of cicercula. Handed down from generation to generation, it has been the vital support for the flegrean farm-worker’s families, together with other traditional dry pods as baiane broad beans, occhietto white beans and “santaroce” peas. Cicerchia is a quite rural plant and in Campi Flegrei it appears edgy, little and coloured from gray to pale brown; It is sowed in January and harvested in July – August. It doesn’t need special needs, grows in hard condition; or rather lack of water gives it a floury and palatable taste.

More complicate is the harvest, still by hand. In fact plants are uprooted with roots, dried on the threshing-floor and, in the hottest hours of the day hit with an ancient farmer’s tool, “o’ vivilo”, for separating the seeds – precious cicerchia – from the pods. What rests, pods and dried little plants, is kept with the traditional sheaf to be used as animal forage during winter, according to the ancient countryside principle “everything is precious and useful”. Leaving the countryside, cicerchia was almost forgot, as a memory of a time of hunger and privations. Only a little group of heroic farmers continued to produce it, preserving seeds and growing farming traditions, together with the ancient and rural taste.

Campi Flegrei a Tavola Association and Di Meo family since 4 years ago started to propose in every demonstrations and tastings this delicious pod, conveying it to young and less young people. With MALAZE’ 2007, together with a group of caterers, we wanted to propose it in their menu, hoping to create that virtuous circuit that ties the product to its land and give it identity, with the wish to renew the joviality recalled in an ancient Neapolitan song “Madama Cicerchia”, just dedicated to this pod.