Torn Socca with Sea Salt and Black Pepper La Socca

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Early on, I decided that one of the ways to learn cuisine Nicoise was to eat my way through Nice's many restaurants. One of those restaurants was more like a snack stop. On market days I would walk there through the narrow, winding streets of old town, where houses are painted the colors of fruits and vegetables - avocado green, deep cranberry, lemon yellow, apricot, and melon - highlighted by shafts of light filtering down from above. At Specialities Nicoise Socca, I discovered socca - the most delicious, uncomplicated chickpea crepe. It underlined for me what this style of cooking is about. Socca is nutritious, healthy, and heart-warming, made with humble ingredients. Rarely found outside of Nice or the Nice countryside, it is a simple pleasure that brings people together under the Mediterranean sun to stand in line for their paper plate, to pick up the torn pieces of socca with their fingers, and to savor the dish that is so emblematic of the Nicoise way of life. Socca is made from a batter of chickpea flour, water, and olive oil and cooked on huge, searing-hot flat pans into very thin crepes. The cook uses a paddle to even out the batter in a large circle, then bakes it in a wood-burning oven until the underside is crisp. The trick to making it at home is to get the oven really hot and heat the pan in the oven long enough so the batter sizzles when you pour it in. Many recipes for socca call for baking it on very high heat, but I find that putting it directly under the broiler after it is baked works best - a tip I learned from a recipe by Mark Bittman. This produces a crispy crepe with slightly charred edges. It's as close to the real thing as you can get. Socca should be eaten while it is hot, so pass it around immediately. If you fall in love with socca , as I have, and you visit Nice, you can buy your own copper socca pan to make it in.