Pasta e Fagioli

Adapted from Eat This...It’ll Make You Feel Better by Dom Deluise

When I was in school, I made this all the time. It tasted good, was cheap and easy, and I had a vegetarian friend who often ate with me, and it’s vegetarian. The book this is from is out of print, but if you check it out on Amazon, you will see it has 122 reviews, most of them very favorable. It is written by the actor Dom Deluise and essentially represents the cooking of Italian-American immigrants, so those of us who are second - or in my case third - generation Italian-Americans will recognize and enjoy this food. This book has a lot of vegetarian recipes in it, presumably because Italian-American Roman Catholics were stuck for so many years with meatless Fridays. 

Pasta e Fagioli
Adapted from Eat This...It'll Make you Feel Better by Dom Deluise

This is thick, not soupy.

Serves 2 - 3

2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce (don’t get fancy; this is better than tomatoes here)
1 cup water
1 large can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (I use Goya or Progresso)
1 cup uncooked DeCecco elbow macaroni (I specify DeCecco because the elbows are very small.)  If you prefer to weigh it, use 6 ounces.
Parsley, chopped
Grated cheese – parmigiano-reggiano or pecorino-romano or a mixture of the two

Cook macaroni slightly underdone and set aside. Put the oil in a saucepan, add the garlic, turn on the heat, and cook the garlic gently in the oil until just starting to color. Add the tomato sauce. Fill the tomato sauce can with water, and add it to the tomato sauce in the pan. Cook this for 10 minutes. Add the beans, stir gently, and simmer on a low flame for 10 minutes more.

Add the cooked pasta to the pan. Stir gently. If it gets too thick, add a little more water – but I don’t usually have this problem. Turn off the heat, and add chopped parsley. Sprinkle with grated cheese. Serve immediately or else the pasta will absorb the liquid.

Print recipe

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