Pasta fazool, or pasta e fagioli, quite literally translates to "pasta and beans", but it's so much more than that. It's a bowl of comfort seasoned with nostalgia and a heavy sprinkle of history. And while there are many ways to make it, and many ways to pronounce it, one thing is consistent: it's always delicious!
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What is pasta e fagioli?
The only requirement for a dish to be called pasta e fagioli, or pasta fazool, is to contain pasta and beans.
There are many variations but the most common combination is a small-shaped pasta, such as tubetti/ditalini, or elbows, and cannellini beans, navy beans, or borlotti beans.
Some versions will be soupy, while others will be thicker; some may include pancetta, while others will be vegetarian.
Some variations of pasta fazool will include tomato, while others will be "in bianco".
I've eaten many variations throughout my life, and each time I make it I change it up ever so slightly.
No matter how I make it, we always enjoy it and find it ultra comforting.
Why do you pronounce it "pasta fazool"?
I've been pronouncing this dish "pasta fazool" my entire life but I never understood the linguistic background until recently.
In the Neapolitan dialect, fagioli, the Italian word for beans, is fasule; in Sicilian, the word is fasulu.
Considering the fact that most of the Italian immigrants that came to the US are from Southern Italy, that would explain why many here in the US call it pasta fazool.
In this episode, we dive a bit deeper into the linguistic and culinary backstory of this amazing dish!
Resources
Sip and Feast Pasta e Fagioli Recipe
Sip and Feast Sausage Pasta Fagioli Recipe
Sip and Feast Pasta e Ceci Recipe
Sip and Feast Pasta e Patate Recipe
Sip and Feast Pasta e Lenticchie Recipe
Sip and Feast Garlic Butter Roast Chicken Recipe
Philosokitchen History of Pasta Fazool
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Transcript
Intro
James (00:00):Welcome back to the Sip and Feast podcast, episode number 19, I believe this is?
Tara (00:04):18.
James (00:05):Thank you, Tara. This is pasta fagioli or pasta fazool, or pasta and beans. This is a discussion of one of the most quintessential Italian dishes and definitely an Italian-American favorite. And we're going to go into, again, the little bit of history in there, how to make it really good, and we'll share a couple personal stories about pasta fazool. How's that sound, Tara?
Tara (00:32):Sounds good.
James (00:33):So what are we doing next?
Let's describe it
Tara (00:34):Let's talk about pasta fazool. Let's describe it, maybe, for folks who aren't familiar with it, because I think for many people, even if they live in this area, they might not have actually had it. They may have heard about it because it is kind of a thing in pop culture. It's been in songs. Like that song I think everybody knows. That's Amore. One of the line's in it when something starts to drool like pasta fazool.
James (01:04):Oh, really? Yeah, that's right.
Tara (01:05):Yeah. So anyway, I think it would be helpful if you take a few minutes and describe it.
James (01:12):We'll go more into detail later about it, but it's simply, at its core, pasta and beans. Think of this dish as typically done with white beans, sometimes other types of beans, but it's a small pasta, beans in a broth. Some people will make it brothier, some people will make it more thick. Really a peasant dish. Super peasanty and cheap where you can feed a whole family for a few dollars with this one.
Tara (01:42):That's right.
James (01:42):Any more detail you want me to give right now on this?
Tara (01:45):Yeah, I think there's so many different ways to make pasta fazool. Yes, the basics are that it is usually a small pasta shape, like a ditalini, tubetti, or elbows, and then some type of bean like cannellini beans, navy beans, or borlotti beans, which are used widely in Italy, but they're harder to find here.
James (02:10):Also, they're called cranberry beans-
Tara (02:11):Cranberry beans.
James (02:12):Here in America.
Tara (02:12):That's right. Sometimes you start it with some pancetta or bacon, but you don't have to. Sometimes there's tomato, sometimes there's a lot of tomato, sometimes there's no tomato.
James (02:23):And so there's a bunch of different ways to do it. You can start with olive oil, lard. Traditionally, if you go really far back, I would say… And again, we'll get into it in a sec, it would be done with lard, which is most Italian dishes were done with lard instead of olive oil. Olive oil is a more recent thing and a healthier thing, obviously. The main distinction, I would say, with pasta fazool to someone who maybe thinks of themselves as an expert in it or who grew up with it like I did, it's probably the dish I ate the most that I was almost forced to eat. It's a very simple thing. So then restaurants that, or people who maybe don't know so much will try to make it something that it's not. And this could always be from a Bon Appétit article to maybe New York Times cooking, or it could be the Olive Garden or Carrabba's or something. They try to put 48 ingredients in it, and that is really not what pasta fazool is. Though it can be, but it's a dish of the poor.
Tara (03:23):That's right. And it's a soup that I would also say is a very creamy soup, but there's no cream in it.
James (03:30):Yeah.
Tara (03:31):It's creamy because of the beans.
James (03:33):And the way the pasta is cooked.
Tara (03:34):That's right. Right, the starch. So that's an-
James (03:36):The technique of how you cook it.
Tara (03:37):That's an important part of making it, which we'll go into a little bit later. Now, because I just mentioned that there's all different variations on how to make it, and these variations can be from different regions of Italy, but it can vary from even within a family. And I'm using your family as the example because I know your grandma made it one way, your mom made it a different way, and you make it a little bit different than how they both made it. Is that right?
James (04:07):In some of the recipes that have been fleshed out more on videos where I've done maybe four different versions, like Sunday sauce, you might get the feeling that Jim doesn't really cook the same any one time, and you would be correct to assume that. And as you become a better cook, as you really start learning the knowledge of this and taking these recipes, and as I always say, making them your own, you won't have a recipe per se either. But I will just say my grandmother and mothers, they were fairly similar, their recipes. They weren't very different. When I put it on the YouTube video and when I put it on the site, I wanted to make it a little bit different than, I guess, how most people probably around this area of the country will do it. And the way most people in this area of the country, they will do it with a lot of garlic.
(05:01):And I'm generalizing here. No doubt you might be from here too, and you know it might have a really involved version, but for the most part, it would be ditalini pasta. That's the pasta that's used. And then it would be cannellini beans, and it would be olive oil, and it would be a lot of garlic, hot red pepper flakes, and that's pretty much it. And just a little bit of tomato. Maybe three or four tomatoes from a 28 ounce can, take a few of those tomatoes, just squeeze them in there. So not quite a bianco, but very close, and then a lot of water in there. You want to get fancy, you add a little bit of chicken stock, but most people probably weren't doing that. That's my mother and how my grandmother did it, and that is really the core pasta fazool. That is the most common way it's prepared all across the New York, New Jersey metro. How can I speak for all those people? Maybe I'm wrong here. This is a very inexpensive, very accessible, very cheap, quick dinner dish.
Tara (06:08):No, you use rosemary in your pasta fazool. Did your grandma make it with rosemary and your mom didn't or-
James (06:15):Occasionally, my grandmother might've used it, but for the most part she was doing how I just described.
Tara (06:20):And your mom never did use rosemary?
James (06:22):No, no herbs really get into it. That would be more of a northern Italian thing. And I just wanted to make the recipe a little different, so I put a little bit of rosemary in there a little bit.
Tara (06:31):I do like it.
James (06:31):And a little bit of pancetta.
Tara (06:33):I like the rosemary in it.
James (06:34):But as far as the sofrito and stuff like that, and we spoke about that in last week's episode with the chicken parm and it was an offshoot in that discussion about how the earliest immigrants that came to this country, they were doing the bolognese, and then when the great wave happened, that wasn't a dish that they brought with them because they were all from southern Italy. And that whole carrot, celery, onion, sofrito in every dish is not a common thing or as common as it is in other parts of Italy. And that goes to pasta fazool as well. It's rare to see that. So if you google the recipe online and you get Olive garden copycat recipe, it'll have chunks of that. It'll have sausage in it, it'll have a bunch of herbs in it, maybe it'll have multiple beans.
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