Pasta e Fagioli

A traditional soup of the Veneto, though pasta-and-bean dishes exist all down the Italian peninsula. In the Veneto it is closely tied to the Lamon bean — Fagiolo di Lamon della Vallata Bellunese, a variegated red borlotto from the Belluno valleys that has held EU PGI status since 1996 — and to autumn, the season of the pig slaughter, which is why pork rind (cotenna) and cuts of soppressa or pancetta so often flavor it. The exact origin is unrecorded; it is a peasant dish born of thrift, combining cheap dried beans, a little cured pork and homemade pasta into a one-pot meal for field and lagoon workers. The American bean reached Italy after the 16th century, so the dish in its bean form is no older than that, though pulse-and-grain pottages in Italy are far older.

Thick enough that a spoon stands up in it, not a thin broth — the test of a proper one. The base is creamy and savory from the pureed beans, the whole beans staying soft but intact, the short pasta tender and a little slippery. The flavor is gently porky and rich from the rind and soffritto, earthy and sweet from the beans, with the grassy bite of raw olive oil poured over at the end and a good crack of black pepper. It is comforting and hearty rather than refined. A bad one is watery and bland with hard, undercooked beans, or gluey and heavy if too much pasta was cooked into it and the starch took over.

The creamy body comes entirely from the beans, no dairy involved. Cooked beans are full of starch granules held in soft cell walls; pureeing a portion of the beans and their cooking liquid and stirring it back ruptures those cells and releases starch that thickens the broth into a smooth, velvety base, while the whole beans add texture. A piece of pork rind simmered in the pot lends its collagen, which breaks down to gelatin and gives the soup a rounder, silkier mouthfeel and body. Salt is added only after the beans are tender — early salt and especially acidic ingredients like tomato firm the bean skins and slow their softening, so they stay tough. The pasta is best cooked in the soup itself near the end so it sheds starch into the broth and thickens it further; cook it too long ahead or hold the soup too long and the pasta keeps drinking liquid and goes soft and gluey, which is why many cooks finish the pasta just before serving.