La minestra di orazio

Horace’s chickpea, laganelle and leek soup

Preparation info
  • Serves

    6

    • Difficulty

      Easy

Appears in
Anna Del Conte on Pasta

By Anna Del Conte

Published 2015

  • About

In ancient Rome, pasta made with durum wheat flour and water was baked on large, hot, porous stones. It was then cut into strips and used in soup. Sometimes it was fried instead of baked. This recipe is my interpretation of the dish to which the poet Horace refers in one of his Satires, ‘Ad porri et ciceris refero, laganique catinum’ (‘I am going home to a bowl of leeks and chickpeas and lasagne’). It is one of the earliest references to any kind of pasta. Here I have used