Farinata: What Sailors in a Storm Can Do With Chickpeas

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.

A Tour of the Forts Surrounding Genoa - Part 3

Having rested and enjoyed the view for a while, you leave the Forte del Diamante behind and make your way down the hill along a path which, as you can clearly see in the picture above, follows a zigzag route down the mountainside.

Your destination now is the Forte del Fratello Minore (in English: Little Brother Fort). As you come to the end of the zigzag stretch down from Forte del Diamante, you come to another fork in the road.

You take the path on the right, heading uphill, through the bushes as you can see in the picture. At the top of the hill you come to a relatively flat area. Here there was once also a Big Brother Fort (Forte del Fratello Maggiore), and you actually walk right over its ruins, without even noticing it if you're not careful. You'll see there are traces of brick walls at ground level, but nothing sticking up anymore. From here you get a good view of the Forte del Fratello Minore.

As you can see, the path from here is quite clear. Unfortunately, when you get there, you find the actual fort, just like the Forte del Diamante, is closed, and you can only look at it from the outside. However, there are plenty of interesting corners and things to explore around the outer walls.

As it is, what was once the entrance to this place now looks like this:

You leave this fort the way you came, but you'll notice on your way back that the path splits into two. Instead of heading back up towards the ruins of the Forte del Fratello Maggiore, you now stay on the right and head in the direction of the  city. This part of the walk is mostly in the open and in spring you'll find lots of wild flowers adding their color to the mountainside. Even in late summer, splashes of color are not as uncommon as you would expect, especially after the August heat.

The path now follows the top of the ridge, heading to the next fort in the tour, Forte Puin. You can see both the path and the fort here:

Forte Puin was built between 1815 and 1831, in the place of a previous fort dating back to 1742. It has been private property since 1963 and is reported to have been restored more than once in that time. The name Puin is said to come from "du Puin" in the local dialect, which in Italian would be "del Padrino", and in English "of the Godfather" - although that's as far as the local tourist brochure goes in the explanation, and you are left to figure out for yourself why it should be called that.

Having walked around to the front of the fort, you can walk right up to the gate and have a look in, and then head down the very grand stairway that leads away from the entrance towards the rest of the path. You then come to a point where the path splits again. This is marked by a large brick and rock thing in the middle, a larger, pointy part sitting on top of the smaller part - I suppose it was meant to be a signpost of some sort at some time, but there's nothing written on it. From here you'll see a fort surrounded by antennas up ahead, the fort eventually hiding behind the hill and leaving a lone antenna as a warning.

You can go up there to explore if you wish, but if instead you turn down to your left, the path takes you down a steep hill through what the signs advertise as the "valley of butterflies". There are truly millions of them. Obviously if you go in Spring there will be even more. The overall effect is quite magical the first time you walk through there, and along the way there are signs telling you what types of butterflies there are in the area so you know what to be on the lookout for.

This part of the walk comes to an end very quickly, and you find yourself, all of a sudden, next to a trattoria, with a barking dog down on your right and, if you're lucky, you may even get the chance to meet this horse who apparently belongs to the lady from the trattoria. The two of them kindly accepted to pose for a photo together.

You now come back to the path you first followed, and retrace your steps all the way back to the Funicolare station in Righi past the rescue dog training center and the archery club.

Overall this whole walk will only take you 3 or 4 hours, depending on how fast you walk and on how long you stop along the way to explore your surroundings. I think that makes it an even better walk because it doesn't take the entire day away from you and you get to see so much in that short amount of time.

You can also get a small pocket guide to a number of different walks among the forts (there are many others) from the local tourist office in via Garibaldi for about 50 cents. If you do happen to travel to Genoa sometime, take the morning to go on this walk, you won't regret it!