Italian · Soup
Pasta e Fagioli
- Easy
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, richness that coats and comforts, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 2 cans cannellini or borlotti beans
- 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 celery, diced
- 3 garlic cloves
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1L stock
- 150g ditalini
- Rosemary, Parmigiano rind if you have it
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Sweating aromatics: soft, never browned
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · celery
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Sweat vegetables in olive oil; add garlic, rosemary, tomato paste.
- Add beans, stock, and the cheese rind; simmer 20 min. 20 min
- Blend a third of the soup for body; return and cook pasta directly in it.
- Finish with good oil and grated cheese.
How it should come out
- Ladled, it falls in a slow ribbon and mounds slightly in the bowl rather than spreading flat to the rim.
- Broth is opaque and velvety; no clear liquid separates out around the beans after a minute standing.
- Most beans are still whole with their skins intact rather than the pot gone to paste, and the ditalini is still firm at the tooth when the bowl reaches the table: pasta is distinguishable from bean by bite.
- Surface carries a slick of raw finishing oil, beaded and green-smelling rather than cooked in, with grated cheese that has not yet melted flat.
- Tasted at the bowl it needs no salt at the table and is not sharp with it: the rind and the finishing cheese are already in the total. Rosemary reads as background perfume, with no loose needles in the spoon.
Where it goes wrong It sat on the stove or was reheated, and the ditalini has drunk the broth: what arrives is a stiff bean porridge with soft grey pasta and no liquid left to call soup.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chianti Classico or Barbera d’Alba
- Also Right
- Vermentino for the lighter plates
- From the Taps
- Italian pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- San Pellegrino Sanbittèr
Tomato’s acid demands equal acid: Italian reds evolved beside the sauce, and the regional pairing is the safest law in wine.
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