Somewhere, in an Elizabeth David book or maybe MFK Fisher, I read about an Italian/Provençal street food that is a chickpea-flour pancake..
I missed out on the real thing in my visits to both those places--back then, I had not known it existed--but I knew from the description that I would love it.
In the Silver Spoon cookbook--the Joy of Cooking-scale Italian food compendium translated and put out by Phaidon a few years ago--I found two recipes involving farinata: one, the pancake. Two, a chickpea flour polenta, cut into strips and fried. I decided to try the pancake. The batter is a lot of water--six cups--and quite a bit of oil, and some chickpea flour and salt.
I heated some olive oil in a cast iron skillet and swished a rosemary bough in it. I poured in as much of the batter as would fit and put it in the oven.
Eventually, it cooked down--the water evaporated--and it became deceptively eggy and custard-like--and, to this omnivore who lives in a vegetarian home, also reminiscent of chicken fat (though it was, of course, just flour and water and oil). Authentic? I have no way of knowing.
It was different, and not bad at all. We ate as much of it as we could--nearly half, I think. I must disclose that later, we both experienced indelicate digestion.
