One-Pot Tomato Chickpeas and Orzo (Pasta E Ceci)

The Roman legionary's daily ration included, among its components, a measure of dried chickpeas — cicer arietinum, a legume the Romans had cultivated since before the Republic. Cicero, Rome's greatest orator, took his family name from the chickpea, suggesting his ancestors were either distinguished farmers of the crop or, in the self-deprecating Roman tradition, were mocked for their association with it. The pasta e ceci — pasta with chickpeas — that appears in Roman culinary records predates the tomato by fifteen centuries. The original was simply chickpeas simmered in broth with a small pasta, dressed with olive oil and black pepper, a dish of such fundamental Roman character that it survived the fall of the empire, the medieval period, and the Renaissance essentially unchanged. When the tomato arrived from the Americas in the sixteenth century, Roman cooks added it to the existing preparation with minimal ceremony: it fit so naturally that it seemed to have always been there. This version cooks the orzo directly in the tomato and chickpea broth, so the pasta swells with the flavor of the legumes and the acid of the tomatoes, thickening the broth with its released starch into a soup that is simultaneously a pasta dish — exactly as the Romans understood it.