[Sca-cooks] Re: Martino Corno's pasta recipe?

[Christiane]

Johnnae,

Thanks to you and Kiri for your help; what irks me about this is that even the Italian Websites say exactly the same thing.

As an aside, the reference to such pasta as "tria" is still a dialect word for pasta in Sicily and southern Italy today. According to Mary Taylor Simeti and other food writers, it comes from the Arabic itrjia (for string). And finding that out cleared up a mystery for me as to why my grandma occasionally referred to vermicelli or spaghetti as such.

The general fact that there seems to have been a 12th century pasta factory near Palermo seems to be undisputed. How the Arab-Sicilians cooked it and with what, I don't know, but I keep stumbling across a modern-day recipe for pasta with chickpeas "tria e ceci" most often attributed to Lecce. Guess where the Muslims who were pushed out of Sicily were resettled or fled to? 

So I offer this modern-day recipe that has very deep roots:

300 grams of tria (typical pasta from Lecce, substitute fresh vermicelli or fresh ribbon pasta)
2 stalks of celery, chopped
1 white onion
3 cloves garlic (I added this in, the simple version I found doesn't call for it)
250 grams of dried chickpeas
salt
3 bay leaves
extra-virgin olive oil

Soak the chickpeas with a little baking soda overnight; rinse and drain. Simmer the chickpeas with the bay leaves, celery,  and a little salt until tender; keep adding water so there is an inch of water over the chickpeas at all times, you're going for soupy here. Boil the pasta; drain and set aside. In a large frying pan, fry the finely minced onion and one clove of garlic, crushed, in the olive oil until browned. Take the other two cloves, and brown them in another pan with some oil until browned, then remove. Fry half the pasta in the garlic-infused oil until crisp. Then add the drained boiled pasta to the chickpeas (do not drain the chickpeas), mix well, let sit for a few moments, and top with the fried pasta.

There are variations of this recipe adding crushed red pepper, tomato, rosemary, and anchovies. It must be made with fresh pasta, however, otherwise it's just pasta e ceci.

Is there a similar Arab dish? Now I am really curious 

Gianotta