20 October 2008

Fête de la Branda - Socca 2


Socca is a type of crepe made from a batter of chickpea flour, olive oil, water, salt and pepper. When it's cooked (this oven is wood-fired) the socca is cut into pieces with a pizza wheel and then wrapped in paper - or placed on a paper plate. As you can see in the last photo, there was a long queue in the village to buy this traditional dish. It's eaten with the fingers.

Some socca ovens are bigger than this one and take a one-metre diameter cast iron pan - then the cooked socca obviously feeds quite a few people.

From Provence Beyond: 'Socca and Cade are Provençal pancakes that go back at least to 1860. Cade de Toulon, probably the most ancient, was made from corn flour and the Socca de Nice that evolved from it is made from chick-pea flour. The Marseilles version is today made with a mixture of flours, using only a small amount of chick-pea flour; in Marseilles this was called "tourta tota cada", meaning "tourte toute chaude", or nice hot tarts. It was mentioned in 1879 by Frédéric Mistral as "gâteau de farine de maïs qu'on vend par tranches à Marseille" (or in the vulgar tongue "corn-flour cake sold by the slice in Marseilles").

In that ancient time, there were cade/socca sellers at the marchés and at work sites where they provided the favorite morning meal of the workers. The cade/socca sellers used special wagons with built-in charcoal ovens to keep their wares hot while they announced them with the appropriate cries of "cada, cada, cada" or "socca, socca, socca caouda". Some of the ambulatory socca/cade sellers (or their descendents) are still to be found in the markets at Nice, Toulon and la Seyne-sur-Mer, where the slices are served in paper cones.'

And in Gorbio...

12 comments:

  1. It is nice to see so many people enjoying this food. It is a nice photo composition, Jilly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like these nice and sociable events (apart from feeling hungry right now!)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think I'd like to eat that! Looks great and probably is quite healthy too with chickpea flour.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The socca stall was situated outside my local supermarket on Saturday probably to distract people from the road works outside. anyway it was lunchtime and I couldn't resist. I got mine in a paper cone with lashings of black pepper...yum!
    Just looking at your photo brings back the memory of the taste!

    ReplyDelete
  5. il y a foule pour déguster ces Soccas (je ne connais pas, mais cela donne envie)

    ReplyDelete
  6. So it is eaten as is with nothing else on it except Angela's black pepper? Very interesting and I would like to try one!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Je me mangerais bien une petite crêpe, là, tout de suite!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jilly do you like socca? I think I had something very similar to this in Costa Rica, by a different name of course, and there was a line of people waiting as well.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Delicious! And here was I thinking it had lemon juice and sugar on it!

    ReplyDelete
  10. great montage! you've really captured the atmosphere and those pancakes look great.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Very interesting to watch these street vendors.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails