Today I’m going to help you make a delicious fennel and chickpea soup. It’s so good that everyone in my house will eat it, including the kids. If you serve it with a crunchy salad, some good bread, and maybe sausages on the side, I promise you will have a terrific meal.

This soup was inspired by Giovanni Verga’s Little Novels of Sicily, also the author of The House of the Medlar Tree. Verga’s writing is stark and spare; his stories often seem to be going nowhere in particular until, suddenly, you are somewhere. Often that somewhere is bleak and unsettling; the personalities of Verga’s tough Sicilian peasants can be harsh and pragmatic. Their lives depend on the whims and rules of weather, family duty, and village law. Much depends on a mule, a plot of land, or the Don’s good favor.

In The Orphans, Neighbor Meno has just lost his wife to illness. The village wives are giving him comfort and advising him to find a new wife as soon as he can, possibly the third daughter of Shepherd Nino, to be a mother to the little girl left in the house.

“Don’t talk to me, Neighbor Sidora!” he repeated, shaking his head and heaving his shoulders. “This is a thorn that’ll never come out of my heart! A real saint that woman! I didn’t deserve her, if I may say so. Even yesterday, bad as she was, she got up to see the foal that is just weaned. And she wouldn’t let me fetch the doctor so as not to spend money nor to buy medicine. I shall never find another wife like her. You mark my word! Leave me alone and let me cry! I’ve reason to!”

As Neighbor Meno continues to list his wife’s good qualities, it becomes more and more obvious that she was very good at saving him money, and sacrificing herself for his needs. No wonder he’s crying!

“Such bread she made, the poor departed soul, there wasn’t her like for it. It was soft as meal, it was! And with a handful of wild fennel she’d make you a soup that would make you lick your fingers after it! Now I’ll have to buy my bread at the shop, from that thief Master Puddo, and I shall get no more hot soup, every time I come home wet through like a new hatched chicken. And I shall have to go to bed on a cold stomach. Even the other night, while I was sitting up with her, after I’d been hoeing all day breaking up the lumps on the slope, and I heard myself snoring, sitting beside the bed, I was so tired, the poor soul said to me: “Go and eat a spoonful. I’ve left the soup for you to warm by the fire.’”

You would think that a story about Sicily would be full of great food imagery: for that you need to read The Leopard, which centers on the aristocracy and describes beautiful meals. I’m hoping to replicate some of those later. But in Verga’s stories, we hear about a handful of wild fennel, bread with olives, hard cheese, beans, maybe some figs. Life is hard, the earth is unforgiving and meals are simple. But, fennel is always delicious and I think it pairs very well with chickpeas.

For years I’ve made a chickpea soup that starts with a base of celery, carrots, onion, and rosemary. This time I have changed it to celery, carrots, a little onion, and fennel instead of rosemary. If you’d like to add garlic you can but I really think it competes too much with the fennel.

This is fennel. I took off the tougher outside leaves, cleaned it, and cut off the feathery tops and the bottom. I’ll use the tops as a garnish for the soup and you can use them in a salad. The rest I chop up for the soup. if you want to save a few … — This is fennel. I took off the tougher outside leaves, cleaned it, and cut off the feathery tops and the bottom. I’ll use the tops as a garnish for the soup and you can use them in a salad. The rest I chop up for the soup. if you want to save a few pieces of the white bulb, it’s good to cut up and eat after dinner as a digestive.

Chop up all your vegetables and cook them in olive oil until soft, don’t brown them.

After the vegetables have softened, add two to three cans of chickpeas. Save about a quarter cup. You can make a nice garnish for the soup by frying some up until they’re crisp. Whether you drain the cans is up to you. I drain one and not the others.

Cover the beans and vegetables with water, chicken or vegetable broth. I add chicken broth.

When the soup has cooked and I’ve seasoned it with salt and pepper, I like to use a stick blender and whiz up half to three-quarters of the soup.

Serve over a small macaroni like ditalini or elbow noodles. Garnish with the fried chickpeas, and some fresh herbs of your choice, including the fennel fronds.

This is perfect with with crusty bread and a salad, and maybe some sausage or roasted chicken.

Many years ago, I was lucky enough to be the reference librarian at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Out of the library’s discard bin I rescued South Italian Folkways in Europe and America, first published in 1938 by Phyllis H. Williams. Its introduction describes it as “a compact handbook on the socio-anthropological context of the Italian subcommunities of another period, and in this regard is an important repository of folkways, mores, and institutions which have continuing historical relevancy.” Despite the wordiness of the opening paragraphs, it is a fascinating anthropological read.

In the chapter on Diet and Household Economy, Williams writes that poor peasants in the mountainous region of the country would eat “a supper made of soup made of green vegetables and peas or beans.” Sounds like we are pretty close!… and that the poorest peasants ate a meal of fava beans mashed with greens, seasoned with salt and olive oil. Called beans and leaves, (fave foglie), any family who served it was known as the poorest of the poor. According to Williams, the neighbors would gossip: “They are so poor, they eat fave foglie!”

I think it sounds delicious and might try it the next time I can get my hands on fresh favas. In the meantime, enjoy your soup!