Pasta e Ceci is an Italian rustic soup made with locally grown ingredients. It is based on chickpeas (garbanzo beans) for protein and to make it a hearty soup.
I don’t have any Italian in me, but it doesn’t stop me from trying recipes from other cultures. I end up making them to my taste, so maybe they are not truly authentic. Nothing wrong with that. For example, the original recipe called for only 2 Tablespoons of tomato paste, but if you open a can, you know it’ll go to waste. So I just made it richer with tomato. I also tripled the garlic and added an onion. All things that make dinner just that much better!
Pasta e Ceci
Ingredients:
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 1 bulb of garlic
- 1 small white onion, diced
- 2 tsp dried rosemary, crumbled
- ¼ tsp red pepper flakes
- ¼ tsp ground black pepper
- 1 6-ounce can tomato paste
- 6 cups stock or broth
- 2 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 8-ounces ditalini pasta
- Fresh Parmesan cheese, to taste
Directions:
Heat the oil in a stockpot over medium heat. Add in the onion and saute.
Peel and chop the garlic. Add it to the pot with the rosemary, red pepper flakes, and black pepper, and saute for a minute. Add the tomato paste, stir, and sauté for another minute, or until the paste darkens.
Take one can’s worth of the chickpeas and 1 cup of broth, blend in a blender until smooth.
Add in the remaining 5 cups of broth, the other can of chickpeas, and the blended mix to the pot.
Heat it until it just starts boiling, add the pasta, and stir often at first (to prevent sticking). Lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and stir often for about 10 minutes total (I followed the time on the pasta package).
Taste for seasoning, and add salt if you like.
Serve with plenty of freshly grated Parmesan on top.
Serves 6.
Notes:
This soup is very thick, somewhere in the “stoup” line. If you want a soupier texture, add a bit more broth as desired.
As for the broth, you can use chicken or vegetable.
To make it even heartier, I sliced a package of chicken sausage and pan-fried it till sizzling, then shared it amongst the bowls on top.
~Sarah