Pasta with beans is even fancy in Italian: learn how to make pasta e fagioli – 06/26/2023 – Marcão’s Recipes

Beans and pasta is one of the most controversial combinations in cooking. It causes revolt and disgust in many would-be guardians of good taste.

I’m talking about Brazilian people, of course. Because, in Italy, pasta e fagioli –literally, “pasta and beans”– is one of the very few dishes with a genuinely national character. It is common in Sicily, Emilia, Piedmont.

The Italian variations of pasta e fagioli are endless. They can be vegetarian and even vegan. You can take a tico of pancetta, cured pork belly. They can take the most diverse types of beans and pasta. It can be soup or pasta.

A Neapolitan friend explained to me what pasta e fagioli is like in his land. In restaurants, they use pig leather to thicken the broth. When they want to be more sophisticated, they add some mussels. In the houses, none of that goes: it’s just beans and pasta, really.

If you think beans and pasta are too cheap, paste them here and be chic: make the recipe I propose below. It’s beans and pasta, but you call it pasta e fagioli. It’ll be fine.

I didn’t imitate any Italian chef. This is a recipe I’ve been making for many years when I have cooked beans and I don’t feel like preparing rice, steak, farofa, etc. Pasta e fagioli is a one-pot dish – easy to cook, easy to wash.

My bean and pasta has bacon, sausage, tomatoes and red wine. Omit or add ingredients at will. It can be made with beans with or without seasoning (if you use seasoned beans, be careful with the salt).

To serve, I usually grate Parmesan and drizzle with a little good olive oil. This time I added a little pistou, a basil-based sauce typical of the south of France.

Provencal cuisine has many things similar to Italian, and pistou is a version of pesto – the difference is that it only uses basil, olive oil and garlic, without pine nuts (or another type of nut) or cheese. Pistou is used to flavor vegetable soups similar to minestrone.

I confess that I put the pistou to have a little blue in the photo, which was kind of monochromatic. But it was pretty good – there was no way not to be. Go with faith: you can make this bean with pasta even to receive a date.

PASTA E FAGIOLI

Yield: 2 servings

Difficulty: easy

Ingredients

100 g of chopped bacon

100 g of fresh pork sausage

3 minced garlic cloves

½ chopped onion

1 can of peeled tomatoes

½ can (the same as the tomato) of red wine

2 bay leaves

1 cup cooked and drained red beans (more broth to taste)

100 g of pasta for soup

1 bunch of basil

100 ml of olive oil

Salt, pepper and grated cheese to taste

Way of doing

1. In a pan, heat the bacon over low heat until the fat melts. Fry the whole sausage. Reserve the sausage in the fridge.

2. In the same pan, sauté two cloves of garlic and the onion. Add the tomato, wine and bay leaf. Cook until thickened.

3. Slice the sausage and add it to the sauce. Add beans and broth. Cook for a few minutes. Put the noodles to cook with the soup.

4. In a processor, beat the basil with olive oil and the remaining garlic. When the noodles are cooked, adjust the seasoning of the soup. Serve with basil sauce and grated cheese.

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