Pasta e fagioli is a winter soup that will warm and restore you in cold days. I consider it a comfort food.
It can be done in different ways according to the geographic area of Italy where you are. I’ll teach
you the recipe of pasta e fagioli alla veneta.
Ingredients
300 g dried borlotti beans 1 onion
1 potato
1 leg of celery
1 carrot
Pasta
Olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary
Soak the beans overnight in water.
Put the beans in a pot with a small quantity of olive oil (better if you have a pressure cooker because beans require a long time to be cooked), add the vegetables and spices. Cover all with abundant water.
If you have a pressure cooker you’ll need almost 40/45 minutes from the boil, with a normal pot more than 1 hour, checking that water doesn’t evaporate.
When it’s cooked, take off some spoons of beans and then make a cream of the rest with the mixer.
If you don’t need the whole quantity of soup, put as much of it you think you’ll eat, put it on the stove and when it boils, put some pasta inside it. You can use some eggs tagliatelle or pappardelle broken into small pieces or ditali/ditalini rigati.
When pasta’s cooked, serve it to your guests. It’s a perfect family dinner.
Some suggestions: when you cook pasta in the soup, careful because it tends to stick to the bottom of the pot. It’s typical when you cook with beans. Mix it quite often.
Pasta absorbs water, so if the consistency of the soup becomes to creamy, add a few hot water to it.
