Pasta and beans with chickpeas Italian style (Pasta e fagioli con ceci all’italiana) is a typical first course of Italian cuisine, creamy, rich in flavor and tasty.
Few ingredients to prepare a comfortable and simple but great-tasting dish that everyone will love.
The entire execution of the recipe for Pasta e Fagioli takes place in a single pot and even the pasta is cooked directly in the sauce, with the addition of hot water during cooking.
This kind of pasta cooking is called “pasta risottata” or “risotto pasta” which means the pasta is cooked as if it were a risotto, that is with the same procedure used to cook Italian risotto.
Ingredients
Tools
Steps
Heat the oil in the saucepan and add the chopped garlic, after removing the inner core if present. (it is that inner filament, the sprout that makes garlic indigestible).
Add the rosemary and cook, stirring, until it is fragrant, about 30 seconds.
Add the beans and chickpeas and let them season for 2 minutes, stirring.
With an immersion blender, directly inside the saucepan, blend a little of the beans and chickpeas but not all, leaving several whole.
Then pour in the tomato puree, a pinch of salt and pepper and cook for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally.
Pour enough hot water to cover everything, exceeding it by two fingers, add a pinch of salt and bring to the boil.
Cook the pasta
When it all comes to a boil, pour in the pasta and stir.
Cook the pasta, adding more hot salted water as needed.
Stir often because at this stage the pasta tends to stick easily to the bottom of the pot.
The end result should be a pasta with a nice creamy texture that should be thick and creamy but neither too liquid nor too solid.
To achieve this result, adjust as you add the water for cooking the pasta, so add a little at a time.
Serve the pasta e fagioli with some grated Parmesan cheese to add as a delicious finishing touch.
Enjoy!
Advice
For this recipe, you can use the pasta you like but the important thing is that it is of a small size such as Orecchiette, or Gnocchetti sardi, you can also use crumbled tagliatelle or mixed pasta.
For convenience, I have used both borlotti beans and canned ready-to-eat chickpeas, but there is nothing stopping you from using dried or fresh ones, in which case remember to soak them in cold water for at least 12 hours before cooking.
If you don’t like rosemary, you can eliminate it or replace it with fresh chopped parsley, sage or laurel.
If you like, you can add hot chili pepper.
Curiosities
This pasta and beans is a dish of the “cucina povera” (poor cuisine) of the Italian tradition, which was prepared by farmers who used the fruits of the earth and of their work to bring to the table a meal to feed their very large families.
In Italy, the recipe of pasta e fagioli varies a lot from region to region. There are those who prepare this dish by adding tomato, those who use just a pinch of tomato paste, and those who omit it completely. There are those who prefer a drier dish and those who prefer a more brothy one (by adding water or broth), however the base of this recipe is always the same: pasta, beans, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, aromas such as rosemary, sage, laurel etc.
And I, in this pasta and beans I also added chickpeas because I love them!
But you can also leave them out if you prefer.
Prepare this pasta and beans with chickpeas the day before, or make a good amount so that you have leftovers for the next day. This is because, an excellent feature of this pasta is that the next day it will be even more flavorful and tasty.
Here in Italy it is customary that if you have leftover pasta and beans, the next day it will be back on our tables. Just heat it up with a little broth or water and you will feel how good it is!
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Varied doses for servings