Socca Niçoise: the small pancake made with chickpea flour.

If there's one dish I remember from my walks through Old Nice, it's the socca , fresh from the wood-fired oven. This large chickpea flour pancake is an institution, a moment of sharing, eaten with your fingers, generously peppered. It's crispy on the edges and melts in your mouth, and above all, very simple to prepare. And the icing on the cake? It's naturally gluten-free. Originally a poor man's dish, it was the energy-boosting snack of workers and fishermen on the docks, cooked on large circular copper plates. It shares a direct lineage with the farinata , its twin sister from Liguria, as well as with the cecina . A very similar variant can also be found in Algeria under the name calentica (or karentica), often flavored with cumin and eggs. Whether it comes from Nice, Genoa or Oran, it remains the universal symbol of a cuisine of sharing, gluten-free and cooked over a wood fire.