Calabria and throughout ancient southern Italy. The laganum pasta is mentioned by Cicero and Horace in Roman sources as a flat pasta cooked with legumes — making this combination one of the oldest documented pasta preparations in history.
Lagane e cicciari (lagane with chickpeas — cicciari is Calabrian dialect for ceci/chickpeas) is one of the oldest pasta dishes in the Italian record: lagane are flat, wide strips of unleavened pasta (no egg — just flour and water), documented in ancient Roman sources as laganum. Combined with chickpeas slow-cooked in water with garlic, rosemary, and chilli, then finished with a generous pour of Calabrian olive oil, this is a dish of bronze-age simplicity that has survived unchanged in the Calabrian countryside for 2,000 years.
The chickpea cooking water, enriched with garlic and rosemary, creates a pale, starchy broth that the pasta thickens into a sauce. The chickpeas add earthy sweetness; the chilli adds heat; the olive oil at the end provides richness and rounds the flavour. Simple, ancient, and extraordinarily satisfying.
Lagane are made from 00 or semolina flour and water only — no egg. The dough is rolled thin (2-3mm) and cut into wide, irregular strips about 2cm × 10cm. Do not dry them — cook immediately. The chickpeas should be soaked overnight and cooked from dried with aromatics (garlic, rosemary) in the cooking water — the chickpea water is the sauce liquid. The pasta is cooked directly in the chickpea water (not a separate pot of salted water) — the starch from the pasta thickens the chickpea liquid into a unified dish. Finish with cold-pressed Calabrian olive oil poured directly over at the table.
The dish should be thick — almost a porridge of pasta and chickpeas — not a soup. If the chickpea water is too thin, remove some chickpeas, crush them, and stir back in to thicken. A dried peperoncino cooked with the chickpeas adds gentle heat without sharpness. This dish reheats well with a little added water — and improves overnight.
Using egg pasta instead of water-only — lagane are unleavened water pasta; eggs change both flavour and texture. Using tinned chickpeas — acceptable for quick cooking but the cooking water from dried chickpeas is essential to the sauce body. Cooking pasta separately — the pasta must cook in the chickpea water to thicken and unify the dish. Not enough olive oil at service — this is a cucina povera dish where the finishing oil is a key flavour component.
Elizabeth David, Italian Food; Oretta Zanini de Vita, Encyclopedia of Pasta