Socca

Socca is Nice’s iconic street food—a large, thin crêpe made from chickpea flour, olive oil, water, and salt, baked in enormous copper pans in wood-fired ovens until the surface blisters and chars while the interior remains custardy and soft. The dish epitomises Niçois cuisine’s Ligurian roots (the Genoese farinata is its direct ancestor) and its preparation has barely changed since the nineteenth century, when socca vendors worked the streets around the Cours Saleya market. The batter is deceptively simple: 300g chickpea flour (farine de pois chiche) is whisked into 750ml water with 3 tablespoons of olive oil and a teaspoon of salt, then rested for at least 2 hours (overnight is better) to fully hydrate the chickpea flour and allow any foam to subside. The traditional cooking vessel is a wide, shallow copper pan (60cm diameter) called a plaque, which is slicked generously with olive oil, filled to just 3-4mm depth with batter, and slid into a blazing wood-fired oven at 300°C or higher. The socca cooks in 5-8 minutes, developing a leopard-spotted surface of dark blisters and charred edges while the thin centre remains slightly moist and creamy. For home cooks without a wood-fired oven, the closest approximation uses a cast-iron skillet under a preheated oven broiler at maximum heat. The socca is pulled from the oven, slashed into rough irregular pieces with a spatula (never cut neatly), showered with freshly cracked black pepper, and eaten immediately—standing up, from a paper cone, burning your fingers. It does not travel and cannot be reheated.