Pasta e Fagioli

Half the beans sieved for body, with the pasta cooked in the soup itself.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

• 350 g dried borlotti beans, soaked overnight
• 200 g short pasta, or broken tagliatelle
• 100 g pancetta, diced
• 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 celery stick, chopped
• 2 sprigs rosemary
• 4 garlic cloves
• 200 g tinned tomatoes
• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 1.5 teaspoons salt
• black pepper

Method

1. Cook the soaked beans with two garlic cloves and one rosemary sprig for 80 minutes, salting only at the end. Keep every drop of the water.
2. PASS HALF THE BEANS THROUGH A SIEVE and return the purée to the pot with the whole ones. That purée is the body — there is no flour, no potato and no cream in this.
3. Cook the pancetta in the oil with the vegetables and the remaining garlic and rosemary, 15 minutes, then add the tomatoes and cook 10 more.
4. Combine with the beans and their water.
5. COOK THE PASTA IN THE SOUP, not separately. Its starch is the second half of the thickening, and pasta boiled apart and added leaves a thin broth with pasta sitting in it.
6. Stir often from that point — the starch catches on the bottom.
7. It should be thick enough that a spoon leaves a trail, and thicker still the next day. Beans are the whole point here, where a minestrone has no single star.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes