A street food from the Tuscan Coast

The recipe for Torta di Ceci - Chickpea Flour Cake, gluten free and vegan

Livornese people would call this not just una torta (a cake) but la torta (the cake), as for them it’s unequaled. And don’t call it cecina, a dish that, though equal in shape, ingredients, cooking, and flavor, comes from Pisa. If you prefer, go ahead and call it cinque e cinque, meaning “five and five.” In the past, it was customary in Livorno’s popular street food scene to order five cents’ worth of this torta and five cents’ worth of bread, usually the long, thin loaf called francesino or round, soft schiacciatina.

Though best when baked in a wood-fired oven and using large, round copper baking sheets, it can be made at home.

Without the heat generated by a wood oven, it won’t obtain its characteristic golden crunchiness, but with a very hot oven and heated baking sheet, you can achieve something very close to the original. The traditional way of serving this torta is with a generous dusting of black pepper, inside a sandwich along with a few slices of grilled eggplant.

Invariably it will be accompanied by an old favorite, the aromatic soft drink known as spuma bionda. So serve it with a glass of spuma bionda or something similar, and enjoy.

RECIPE - Torta di Ceci - Chickpea Flour Cake

Excerpted from “From The Markets of Tuscany. A Cookbook” by Giulia Scarpaleggia (Guido Tommasi Editore). Copyright © 2018.