The cold wind slices it's way through the narrow alleys of the old city. It ruffles your hair and chills your ears until you can feel it through to your brain. It finds its way into any opening you may have forgotten in your clothing: down the back of your neck, up the bottom end of the back of your windbreaker, or even up through the ankles of your trousers.
You never know when to expect it. You leave home and it's warm out. You feel stupid walking around with a jacket - overdressed. After all, it's not Winter yet. So you leave home without it. Then out of nowhere the wind picks up and you stand there in your T-shirt freezing. This is Autumn, and surprisingly enough it has been a rather dry Autumn this year. It usually rains heavily for weeks and during that time the temperature drops drastically.
The cool air is still a novelty after the hot summer months, it seems to give you new-found energy (although you feel dead tired by the time evening comes). And at this time of the year there is nothing better than a piece of hot farinata to warm you from the inside. Better yet if you can eat it while you walk, taking in the sights and sounds of the city while you savor one of its most valued specialties.
If you have never tried it, it's very hard to describe. It must be one of the simplest dishes around, made only from chickpea flour, water, and a bit of salt and olive oil. It tastes heavenly. But be sure to eat it hot. It's still good when it's cold, but not as good as when it just comes out of the oven.
The recipe is quite simple: the Wikipedia page in Italian suggests mixing one part chickpea flour to three or for parts water in a terracotta bowl.
You then mix it in, making sure not to leave any lumps. The mixture must then be left to rest in the bowl for a few hours (from two to ten... apparently you decide). Mix it from time to time so that the flour doesn't settle on the bottom.
When you are ready to cook it, pour some olive oil in the traditional copper tray, called "teglia" in Italian. Again, the Wikipedia page suggests one part olive oil to 5 or 10 parts chickpea flour used in the batter (or you can just pour the oil into the tray, until the surface is covered with a layer of olive oil).
Traditionally, farinata is prepared in a wood-burning oven (like pizza), which must be hot. If you are cooking in a normal oven at home, 200 °C will be enough. They then suggest putting the tray into the preheated oven for a few minutes before cooking the actual farinata. This is supposed to prevent the farinata from sticking to the tray.
You then remove the froth from the surface of your batter with a spoon, and using a ladle you pour the mixture into the heated tray, starting at the center. The mixture should cover the tray with a 5-10 mm layer. It should not be thicker than 10 mm.
You then cook it until it turns golden brown, as you can see in the picture. In a pizza oven, the cooking temperatures are a bit higher so it takes much less time. A cookbook I have at home suggests 30 minutes at 200 °C in your home oven, obviously while keeping an eye on it to see that the color is right.
This is truly an ancient dish. There are records of ancient Greek and ancient Roman recipes for pureed legumes mixed with water and oil and baked to form a similar result.
One legend that Wikipedia mentions sets 1284 as the year of its creation. Apparently, that year Genoa defeated Pisa (both powerful maritime republics at that time) in the battle of Meloria. The prisoners they took were put to work rowing the ships back to Genoa, but the ships got caught in a violent storm. Sacks of chickpea flour and barrels of oil were thrown around, mixing together on the deck.
When the storm was over and the sailors discovered this mess, they had no other supplies and were forced to collect whatever they could off of the deck and eat it as it was. Raw chickpea flour and oil must have been quite nauseating, and many of the sailors left their bowls in the sun. When they gathered them later on, they discovered the mixture had baked in the sun, and tasted much better.
When they got back to the port, they decided to try baking it in the oven, and the Genovesi have loved it ever since.
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