Orecchiette con i ceci

This recipe adds a typical northern Italian vegetable, the leek, to a southern Italian sauce. It is a very successful combination of flavours. The best chickpeas to use are those you have cooked from scratch: soak dried chickpeas overnight and then simmer in water with an onion and 2 bay leaves until soft. Failing that, I use organic chickpeas from a carton, which I find much better than those in cans.