Comfort Soup

By Giuliano and Lael Hazan Simple Italian Cooking

Credit: Lael Hazan

Pasta e fagioli, a cold-weather dish if there ever was one, started out as a peasant meal that made its way onto the menus of many modern Italian restaurants. It is found throughout Italy in many variations: the only commonalities among the recipes are beans and some kind of pasta. In the Veneto, where the texture of the thick and creamy soup is achieved by mixing in some mashed potato, it is traditionally made with borlotti beans (also known as cranberry beans) and bits of egg pasta. Central and southern Italian regions use pasta made from flour, water and cannellini beans. Some people puree the beans completely, some leave half of the beans intact, and yet others create a soup without pureeing the beans at all.

In our house, we prefer to use cranberry beans. Ripe cranberry beans have beautiful red and white-speckled markings on their skins, and when cooked, they turn a warm brown color and take on a nutty aroma and flavor. When we grow them at home, our harvest usually only yields one or two beans per person, so we tend to use canned beans, or we'll buy them fresh in our local supermarket when they're in season.

Most people know pasta e fagioli merely by a mispronounced name, sung as "pasta fazool" by Dean Martin in his classic standard "That's Amore." No matter what you call it, though, this dish is sure to warm you up on any cold evening.