Carla Makes Pasta e Fagioli

Oh no you ditalini.

Oh yes I ditalini.

[Laughing]

On no you ditalinied.

Okay, pasta time.

[upbeat music]

All right, today I'm making one of

my all time favorite dishes.

It combines two of my all time favorite things,

which is pasta and beans.

And, this is one of the dishes that my mom made.

So, recently I was digging around in this old book,

Bugialli on Pasta, which is not where

the recipe for this Pasta e Fagioli comes from.

Except I was flipping through it

and I found inside, hand written notes

that I took when I was in college,

and I was, this was from a phone call home

to my mom saying, how do you make Pasta e Fagioli.

So, this is that recipe.

Which is her recipe.

Which is now your recipe.

The three most important things that

go into the soup are your sofrito,

which is the vegetable foundation for the soup.

Which in this case is carrot, and leek, and garlic.

And, it's not just the ingredients,

but the way that you get your sofrito

to the right end-point that's important.

And then, the other elements are cooking the beans,

cooking the pasta, and bringing it all together.

So, I'm gonna start with,

you always start with your sofrito.

And, different cultures have different things

that they put in their sofrito.

Generally always have a carrot, an onion or a leek,

in this case it's a leek, and always garlic.

And, another thing that I like to do

is I just blitz all of these vegetables.

The only thing that I'll do separately

is just drop the garlic in and get that started.

A lot of people when they talk to me about making soup

complain that their soup is bland,

and they can't figure out how to get more flavor into it.

And, I really do think that the key

to a super flavorful soup, souper flavorful soup,

is starting with the sofrito,

and really cooking it for a long time.

So, it's not like a quick saute of vegetables

that you would do for a stir fry,

or if you were doing fried rice or something like that.

So, I'm just gonna blitz these more

so they're finely chopped.

More surface area they kinda dissolve.

So, I don't want this to go all the way

to a puree because then it would be too wet,

and it'll burn, and it won't have any integrity left.

So, this is just really finely chopped vegetables.

And, this looks like an enormous amount,

and that's kinda the point.

It's gonna cook down so much, it's voluminous on purpose.

Okay.

[Man] What if you don't like carrots?

[Man] Go to hell.

Yeah, if you don't like carrots,

who doesn't like carrots?

People don't like celery,

I think no one really has a problem with carrots.

I think that's a made up thing.

So, that was a third of a cup of extra-virgin olive oil.

Really, this doesn't have to be super hot.

I don't want it to get a ton of color at the beginning.

So, I'm adding all of the veg at once.

And, I'm gonna season this right off the bat.

With salt and pepper.

This is the foundation for the soup.

And, it cooks for a good amount of time.

But, it's very hands off, what's happening in the pot.

And, the important part is to kinda

go low and slow at the beginning.

Both the leeks and the carrots

have a lot of liquid in them.

And, I want all of that liquid to sweat out

before the vegetables take on any color.

And, you need a good amount of fat

to get that process going.

And, it's gonna look like not much is happening.

And again, that's kinda the point.

I'm gonna turn up the heat just a little bit.

I should look juicy in the bottom of the pan.

But, if anything feels like it's going very fast,

or sizzling high, or the vegetables are getting browned,

then that would be a good indication to lower the heat.

So, that takes a while, takes about 15, 20, 25 minutes

to cook that down to where I wanna keep going.

Just gonna cover 'em back up.

They gonna take a little cozy nap under there.

You're not gonna believe me, that amazing mound of sofrito,

after about 15 minutes will cook down

to something that looks like

you didn't even start with anything.

And, at this point, my mom would always add

a ham hock to the pot, or whatever, sometimes it was bacon,

sometimes it was pancetta, all of those things would work.

If you are a vegetarian, and you don't wanna add

any meat products, that's fine too.

I would add a little bit more fat to the pan.

And, this is gonna cook in the soup the whole time.

But, I like to give it just a tiny bit of a head start

to start rendering some of the fat out of the ham hock.

One of the things I like about using a ham hock

is that it's gonna add richness.

You don't get a ton of meat off of it,

so it's not really about that.

But, I do like that smoky flavor,

and the saltiness that it gives to the soup.

Once that's gone, for a couple minutes,

just to feel like the ham hock has gotten warmed up,

I'm gonna add the rest of ingredients that go into the soup.

So, the fagioli, or the fazole.

We always used white beans.

I soaked these beans overnight.

These are cannellinis, which soaking just

helps the bean cook more evenly,

it helps it cook more quickly.

Okay, what else is going in here?

This was a 15 ounce can of tomatoes.

You can use fresh tomatoes if you have them.

I don't like biting into a big piece of tomato

at the end of the day, ooh,

or getting the rind, or the stemmy part.

So, I'm just gonna tear these.

You can used canned crushed tomatoes too.

Just make sure that the brand that you're using

doesn't have tomato concentrate

or a lot of puree in the ingredients.

Because that will just thicken the soup

a little bit too much and it won't have

this kind of nice tomatoey but light brothy texture.

Comes out to like six tomatoes with their liquid.

So, if you have a bigger can you can also

just scoop out a couple of cups and then start from there.

And, this is the tomato liquid.

So, the next thing that's going in,

this is one bunch of kale.

Just stripped.

You can tear 'em into smaller pieces,

you can leave 'em in big pieces.

The soup is gonna cook for at least an hour,

and maybe three.

A couple of bay leaves.

So, obviously this doesn't look like soup,

it looks like a mound of kale.

I'm gonna stir it around a little bit.

But, depending on how much liquid you had with your beans,

you're definitely gonna need to add more.

We wanna make sure that the beans are submerged in liquid.

I'll use stock plus whatever water is laying around.

There's a lot of flavor in the beans,

and in all of the veg.

We have enough stock today

because we're in the test kitchen.

So, I'm just gonna add whatever it takes

to cover the beans by a couple of inches.

Yeah, so all in all I added about 10 cups of liquid.

This is about to come to a boil.

Wanna make sure everybody is saving their Parmesan rinds.

When you grate down to the bottom of your parm,

or to your Grana Padano, or even your Pecorino,

don't throw the rind away.

You throw this into the guy.

And, especially if you're not using the ham hock

because you're a vegetarian, that parm rind

is going to lend an insane amount of flavor,

saltiness, a little bit of richness, umami.

You know, that word guys, the umami.

This could take an hour, or it could take three.

The end point for the soup is when

the beans are totally tender and creamy.

You don't want an al dente bean.

You definitely want al dente noodles.

And, you want it to have a little bit low simmer.

I usually set it up with the lid askew.

And, if the liquid reduces so that the beans

are out there in the open air getting exposed,

top it off again, use water, no big deal.

But, just make sure that they stay submerged.

Otherwise they'll dry out and get crunchy,

and your soup will over-reduce and be pasty.

You don't want that.

So, just do its thing.

Take its time.

Quiet, it's quiet time now.

All right, it's been a couple of hours.

The next thing to do is to cook the pasta.

But, you don't wanna cook the pasta

until you know that your soup is ready.

And, along the way while we were checking

to make sure that the beans were submerged,

and there was enough liquid in the soup.

Coming around, tasting the soup, checking the soup.

Seasoning the soup as you go.

But, if you're ready for dinner,

the next thing to do is to cook the pasta.

So, I know that a lot of people are gonna say,

why couldn't I just put the pasta into the soup?

This is like a lot of liquid, and it's boiling,

and now I have a separate pot, and I gotta do the thing.

And, why are you making me do that?

If you cook the pasta in the soup,

it is going to absorb all of that available liquid.

So, all of this like delicious broth

that you've created, that you actually

wanna spoon into when you're eating,

the pasta, the dried noodles, gonna absorb all of that.

And then, in return, fricking pasta is gonna

give back to the soup starchiness and gumminess.

So, you're gonna end up with a gummy noodle,

and a thick kinda pasty soup.

And then, you're gonna really regret

all of the things that you did.

So, cook the pasta separately.

Growing up it was always ditalini,

so that's what I'm using.

But, any like small little shape.

So, even a small shell, or elbows.

So, I'm just gonna set a timer for like

a few minutes less than the pasta package says.

So, if it says nine minutes, cook it for six.

And then, they all come together.

Ditalini going into the soup.

Whatever liquid is clinging

to these noodles is totally fine.

'Cause adding them in here is gonna add

a little bit of starch anyway.

It's not as much pasta as you would cook

if you were cooking pasta for dinner, obviously.

Because there's so many other things going on in the soup.

Look at what happened to the Parmesan rind.

Look at this floppy thing.

There's your parm rind.

You don't really wanna eat this,

so I would definitely take that out.

The ham hock really gave up all of it's love, as well.

So, this is what the ham hock looks like.

And, you can just take those, whatever pieces of meat,

and kind of scrape 'em off the bone.

You can take the meat off the bone

and kind of cut it into smaller pieces.

I'm just really just shredding it apart right into the pot.

Because it is absolutely falling apart, tender.

Let's get the bone outta there.

All right, so we're actually gonna have

Pasta e Fagioli for lunch today in the test kitchen.

We got Carol's recipe for Pasta e Fagioli.

Oof, that looks good.

All right, so you've also got bay leaves.

Unless you give out prizes for whoever

ends up with the bay leaf in your soup,

you might wanna get rid of that too.

There's always a little extra cheese to grate over

when you get to the table.

This is Parmesan.

'Cause I need to, I'm really just in it

to get back down to that rind, you know.

A little red pepper flake,

if you're into that kind of thing.

And, a tiny bit of salt.

I like a lot of black pepper.

Obviously this is my serving so, I get what I want.

Extra drizzle of olive oil,

which my mom was really the first person

to ever show me that that was a thing.

And, it was something that, it really does

change the flavor of the soup.

And that's why we always call for extra-virgin

'cause you wanna use something that tastes delicious.

And then, obviously, if you have pasta and beans,

and all of this other richness, then you'd need more bread.

The one thing I need that I don't have is a spoon.

I mean now that's a spoon.

Oh, it looks delicious.

For me, I'm just chasing that feeling

that the soup that I'm eating is

the one that my mom made for us.

Which is where the inspiration for this

came from the beginning.

So, if I can make it taste like hers,

then I feel like I nailed it.

And it's pretty close.

It's really good.

[Man] What's a good prize for someone

who finds the bay leaf?

Oh, first pick of dessert for the bay leaf.

Get to skip your shower.

That only applies to small humans,

who are constantly trying to get out of bathing.

I feel like when you become an adult,

you're not like looking for reasons

not to be, I love, anyway.