🫘 Pasta e fagioli

Pasta e fagioli is a thick Italian soup of beans and pasta. There is no single recipe: the Accademia Italiana della Cucina records several regional versions that differ in the type of bean, the pasta shape and the seasoning.

In the Roman version ('all'uso di Roma'), 300 g of dried borlotti beans are soaked overnight and simmered very gently for about two hours with garlic and a celery stalk. In a clay pot, pounded lard, onion and a second celery stalk are fried in olive oil, peeled tomatoes or tomato paste are added and cooked for 8 minutes, and the beans go in with part of their cooking water. Then 150 g of medium ditalini (called cannolicchi in Rome) or broken spaghetti are added, keeping the soup from becoming too liquid; it is left to rest and served with grated parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil. The Accademia also mentions a variant with pork rind.

The Campanian version uses 300 g of mixed pasta (pasta mista), tomatoes, garlic, celery, oregano and chilli; the soup should come out 'dry', bound by a creamy sauce, and rest for 10 minutes before serving. Part of the beans is mashed for this. In Tuscany dried cannellini are cooked with garlic and sage, four fifths are passed through a sieve, and tagliolini or maltagliati are cooked in this cream with rosemary and chilli. In Civitavecchia cannellini or borlotti are combined with short cannolicchi pasta and a soffritto of onion, celery, carrot and basil.

What unites these recipes is the principle: the beans partly break down and thicken the broth, and the pasta cooks directly in it. Ditalini and other small durum wheat tubes are the most common choice for this soup.