Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Five and Five

La Vecchia Venezia restaurant pizzeria, Livorno
The Old Venice
Pizza and 5 & 5
take away
Typical Local Cooking - Grilled Meat and Fish
Quality Wines
Climatized premises - Reservations appreciated

Everything checks out, but what about “cinque e cinque” or 5 & 5?
Who of you, outside of Livorno, knows what a 5 & 5 is?Cinque e cinque, torta di ceci, LivornoMing was close to the truth: a five & five is a sandwich which, long time before the Euro, was just 5 cents (old italian lira) of bread and 5 cents of “torta”.
“Torta” is short for “torta di ceci” (literally chickpea pie) which local vendors prepare with water, chickpea flour, salt and a bit of olive oil. The batter is poured in large pans called “teglie” and baked preferably in a wood oven.
The resulting thin pie (more a pancake) is crunchy and crispy on the outside but soft on the inside, and you have to eat it hot, with a sprinkling of ground pepper. You can eat it in slices like pizza or in a sandwich and... voilà the “cinque e cinque”!

See also: Gold of Pisa

7 comments:

rob said...

5&5?? Of course I know, I've goggled it !

Walker said...

I found it on Virtual Tourist, sounds delicious.

Ming the Merciless said...

I wish I had planned my trip to Italy a lot better. I would have liked to visit Venice.

5 & 5 means 5 Euros for 5 slices of pizza? Or just wishful thinking?

Saretta said...

5&5 fa 10, no? O no? ;-)

Ming the Merciless said...

So what is 5 & 5?

Trillian said...

If this is not enough, and there is more, we'll happily do another post!

rob said...

C'è un abisso cognitivo tra lo sterile risultato di una ricerca su Google e la succulenta e croccante spiegazione della tua fotografia!