RECIPE: A soul soothing revithada (chickpea stew)

How to make Maro's slow cooked chickpeas from the island of Sifnos

Hi all,

I didn’t think it would ever come but the cold has finally arrived here in Athens. I write this to you from a desk that looks out onto eucalyptus that blusters under a sky, thick with grey clouds. Today is a day for revithada.

Thanks to its rich clay deposits, the wind-battered Greek island of Sifnos has become known as an island for ceramicists. For hundreds of years, clay pots have been used for cooking, resulting in dishes native to the island, unique to the vessel in which they’re slow baked. No dish is more Sifnian than revithada – a baked chickpea stew traditionally served on Sundays and made in a skepastaria (a special clay pot). Left in a wood oven overnight, it results in ultra-soft chickpeas infused with lemon and bay leaf and requires very few ingredients to achieve a perfectly comforting stew that sings with the zing of the local citrus fruits. It pairs well with a slab of feta, a couple of olives and great hunks of sourdough bread.

What makes the revithada so special is the time that goes into cooking it. Local Yiayia Maro stresses the importance of baking the chickpeas on a low heat for a number of hours. Like my own Yiayia, she cooks hers over an open flame in a special outdoor oven.

“When I was growing up many of the men on the island were potters,” says Maro. “That left the women to farm the land and the children at home to prepare dinner. That’s how I learned to cook revithada myself, from the age of seven. Even on a Sunday, our parents would leave the house by donkey to go out and work while the revithada baked slowly, until they returned home.”

In Sifnos, this is not a dish you might throw together on a Wednesday night after work. It’s a dish traditionally made for Sundays, slow cooked, the flavours of the onion, bay and olive oil suffusing into a hearty dish that only needs a slice of myzithra or a piece of bread for a satisfyingly wholesome Sunday lunch.

If you’re visiting Sifnos this summer, you can try revithada at the bay of Platis Gialos at ‘To Steki’. They serve a special revithada, alongside other Sifnian claypot-baked dishes like beef stewed in a rich red wine sauce. Practically on the water, this local favourite has its own vegetable garden which provides most of its organic produce. To make revithada and the clay pot you bake it in, Verina Hotel Sifnos offers the opportunity to try your hand at the potter’s wheel; the hotel organises classes in one of Sifnos’s oldest clay workshops alongside cooking workshops for its guests.

Below for my paid subscribers, I’m sharing Maro’s recipe for revithada - the dish I’ll be warming myself with today.