AUTHENTIC PASTA E FAGIOLI - Grandma's Recipe

They were gonna make pasta bale or pasta bazo .

I always knew as pasta bazo .

Growing up .

My grandmother and my mother probably made this recipe more than any other recipe .

Maybe the only thing that would rival would be Sunday sauce because we often had that .

Uh on Sundays , there's 1000 ways to make this .

I'm just making pasta and beans with just a few ingredients .

And uh it's probably my favorite way to do it though .

I'll give you a few suggestions .

Typically pasta bazo in America is done with cannellini beans in Italy .

It's done with Bolatti beans or cranberry beans .

This is a 29 ounce can right here and for a half a pound of pasta , this is about right .

But you can use more or you could even use less .

£1 bag of beans is gonna equal probably almost two of these cans .

You get a better value .

If you use a bag .

If you do use a bag , you're gonna have to soak them overnight .

They gotta be soft before start working with it .

Traditionally , it's made with lard .

If you don't have lard , which you can get lard easily by just saving pork fat , bacon fat .

Uh , you could start with a piece of p , if you don't want to start with Pancetta , you can start with olive oil .

It's about four ounces of Pancetta .

I'll use a little bit of olive oil too pasta .

You can use whatever you want .

I'm gonna use Dili .

This is too Betty .

It's the same thing .

It's just to check brand .

This is one can of San Marzano tomatoes .

You really only need about two tomatoes from here .

If you don't want to open up a can use a tiny can , you can use a little bit of paste .

You can even use no tomato in this .

A lot of times you'll see it with no tomato .

And then right here is Parmesan rins .

When you get towards the end of your cheese block , make sure you save those rins .

It's excellent to just cook in your pasta baz in your , in your Riitta lentil soup .

You don't have a rind yet .

Just use some cheese , just some regular cheese cook in there .

But I'll I have a couple more Rs in the fridge .

These rins , you can freeze them for a very long time and they'll stay fine and you're gonna take about a half an onion and then about three cloves of garlic .

You can do four if you want , you can do 10 , use whatever you like .

And by hitting the garlic like that , you can just remove the skin very easily .

So we have our onion garlic and here's a little piece of the cheese .

So this is the rind of the Parmesan Reggiano .

Here's the beans .

We have a half pound of pasta .

A little bit of pancetta .

The tomatoes .

I didn't even open up that can I have right here .

Some crushed , just blender pulse San Marzano tomatoes .

I'm not even gonna need this much .

You only need a little bit here and you can use any type of pot you want for this .

I have a heavy job in here .

What's great about ?

This is a one pot dish .

You don't have to boil the pasta in advance .

In fact , I recommend that you don't boil the pasta in advance .

It's the same thing that we did for pasta .

I , if you want to boil your pasta in advance and toss it in at the end , you can do that too .

Uh , it , it , you'll have similar results , but I do prefer to cook the pasta in here .

Just a touch of olive oil and then the pancetta you don't even need really the olive oil or we're gonna get all this pork fat in here , which is going to really , really help it and it's gonna flavor the sauce , it's gonna flavor the pasta as well .

We're not trying to crisp this up .

I mean , you can cook all the way down and it might get crispy , but when it cooks in there with the beans and the liquid , it's gonna just get soft again .

You see like the piece like right here , that's all fat we wanted , we wanted it all to render out .

It can take about 5 , 10 minutes .

You don't , your heat doesn't have to be too high .

It can be about medium .

So most of the PTA has rendered , you can see see how that looks now .

OK ?

And there's a ton of liquid , liquid fat in here which uh maybe 34 tablespoons worth maybe five , which is good .

So once it gets to that point where it's fully rendered or 80% rendered , you can add in your onions and then you can maybe wait a minute and put your garlic in .

This just turn your heat low , medium low to low .

You don't want to really put color on the onion .

They're gonna get darker just from the pan of fat , but you don't want to like burn them at all .

Give it two minutes , they'll get a little soft and put the garlic in just until they get soft like that .

A lot of times if you people will put rosemary in , if you want rosemary , add that in , you could add that in now a little hot pepper or you could save your hot pepper to the end , which uh is a lot of times what I do , especially when I'm cooking for my family , for my kids instead of making it spicy .

Now , let every person put exactly what they want in as far as hot pepper goes , came in the block , gonna let that cook in the whole time .

I , it smells so good already .

We're gonna add six cups of water .

You're gonna add for a half a pound of pasta , half a pound of pasta with this liquid is gonna come fairly high off already .

All right .

Give it all stir like I just did and bring this up to a simmer .

So I'm turning the heat to about medium .

Now he's an immersion blender .

First of all , if you like it really on the thick side , I recommend that you do do this just a little bit , a couple of pulses .

What you can also do to get a more uniform amount is you can take out maybe a quarter or a half of the beans and you could put them in a regular blender and you can pulse it just remember , you can do this at any point before you put the pasta in .

Once you put the pasta in , then you can't do it anymore .

So keep that in mind .

All right , man , a light simmer .

It's gonna turn it down a bit .

Now .

While , while we uh when we hit the emergent blender , you get the block of the , the rind of Parmesan Reggiano in there , you can take it out if you want , I'm just , I'll try not to hit it right now and you don't have to worry about the pancetta bits in there when you're blending it here .

That's fine .

OK .

That's good .

I don't wanna go crazy here with it .

You wanna maintain , you wanna have some beans in there , whole beans .

Now , right before I put the pasta in , this is the , this is the only thing you really need to know about this .

Now , everything looks easy to up until this point .

Right ?

Looks very easy making this .

When you put your pasta in , you gotta keep stirring it because it will have a tendency to stick .

If you , if you get too thick , just add a little bit warm water .

You know , keep it right on the side , but don't add too much water , add it as you need it .

Then at the end , if you are too thick and if somebody likes it thinner , you can just add a little bit more .

It's fine that way .

So I'm putting in roughly two cups of dili , which is a half a box .

So it's a half a pound .

If you were gonna use a full pound , you , you probably would need a larger pot .

This is Barilla Dili .

The other box was deco tube .

They both say around eight or nine minutes .

It might take a tiny bit longer because we're not in a full , full uh boil , but just keep an eye on it as it starts to cook , it's gonna absorb a lot of liquid right now .

It looks like it's very thin here .

Right .

It's not going to be that way in a few minutes .

Don't go anywhere , don't leave the room .

Make sure you keep stirring it because it will stick .

And I know I've said it before .

If you want to take the easy way , you can boil the pasta and you can dump it in if you don't think that it makes a difference .

Try it both ways .

See which one you like better .

And so it has a tendency to stick and it's sticking right now .

So I just left for a second to see if I had some good bread .

And that's another thing you wanna serve good bread with this .

So if you feel any sticking , you just gently , just remove it and it'll pop right off .

That's what the , the PTA fat .

It really , really helps in that regard .

If you didn't use that , you can just use a lot of olive oil in it .

Also gonna add some olive oil good extra virgin uh , that I have over there for uh finishing .

It's been about five minutes , maybe four or five and uh the pasta is not even close to cooked yet .

It's a little , little , little hard pieces of the deli scale .

They'll get , they're gonna expand by about two or three times the size .

Didn't put any salt in here yet .

We just have the rins from the cheese and we have the salty pancetta and the remaining residual salt from the beans .

It's best to check this at the end and we can adjust .

When I got my , my first place out of college started cooking a lot more .

I cooked when I was young .

I always wanted to learn how to cook with my grandmother , with my mother .

Uh One dish I never cooked was this one .

I , we had it so much that it's almost like I had an aversion to it for a long time .

And then when I was living on my own , I got more and more back into it .

So I'm sure you have dishes like that where you grew up .

That is something that you ate so much that you didn't want to have it anywhere else .

Basically , the pasta is drinking up the sauce , the liquid , it's absorbing it and it's getting more flavorful .

All right .

So it's almost there , but it's not there yet .

Now , see how thick that is getting .

It's gonna have a tendency to stick even more now .

So keep , keep your eye on it .

I don't want to add any liquid right now because I like that consistency .

I want it to be fairly thick .

But if you need to , you got your water right there .

Some people will make this with chicken stock too .

You , you can , you , you don't have to , you get , you get a lot of flavor without it .

It's just good old tap water .

That's all it is .

And the cheese rind just flavors it really , really nicely and that's free .

You know , you buy that cheese instead of throwing that out , just save it .

Just keep testing your pasta .

So you got 11 try when you make it to eat it when it's out , Dan .

They because once it sets , it's gonna get so and that , that's fine .

It's a delicious part of pasta , pasta viole .

See how thick that is and it's gonna get a lot thicker .

So what's gonna happen is if say you wanna prepare this a little earlier pasta might get a little bit softer .

Have to sit .

You can just leave it on your stovetop , just turn the heat off the pasta is gonna drink up all that remaining liquid .

And if you need to , you add a little bit more water , you mix it again .

That's typically what's done because this would be a dish that would be served the whole day like it would be started and start for lunch or whatever .

And then you'd have it again later on when somebody else came home or , or anything like that .

It's an easy , easy one to just have and it's , and it's delicious the next day too .

You can already see it's been sitting in the ball for a few minutes .

It's already so much thicker .

Watch another video .

Maybe they'll put up for you or who knows we'll see you next time .