Pasta e Fagiole
With the weather changing, along with the offerings at the market, it's time to bust out the big pots and shift into soup season. There is a great quote about soup by American Author Kate DiCamillo that embodies the spirit of the labor that goes into a big cozy bowl of soup: “There ain't no point in making soup unless others eat it. Soup needs another mouth to taste it, another heart to be warmed by it.” Motivated by the promise of tasty soups and stews and the opportunity to share our experience with our farmers' market farm-ily, we pooled our community for recipes and got together to bond over our bowls. I present to you Soup-A-Palooza 2025. A collection of staff soup recipes and the stories behind them.
This recipe comes to us from Lis, our Director of Operations. Here's what she had to say about the recipe's roots:
"This recipe comes from Carla Lalli Music, a great Italian chef whose recipes remind me of my great-grandmother's cooking."
- 8 ounces dried cannellini beans
- Salt and pepper
- 6 garlic cloves
- 4 carrots – scrubbed, roughly chopped
- 1 leek - white and pale-green parts only - roughly chopped
- 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 smoked ham hock
- 1 (15-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes
- 1 bunch kale, leaves stripped off stems
- 1 or 2 Parmigiano rinds (optional)
- 2 bay leaves
- 8 ounces small pasta
- crusty bread, and crushed red pepper for serving
Soak beans overnight.
In a food processor, combine garlic, carrots, and leeks and pulse until vegetables are finely chopped. In a soup pot or Dutch oven, heat 1/3 cup olive oil over medium and add chopped vegetables. Season generously with salt and pepper and cook, stirring often, until vegetables start to sweat out some of their liquid, 3 to 5 minutes. Do not let veggies take on any color.
Cover pot and cook over medium-low heat, stirring every 5 minutes or so, until vegetables are soft and juicy, about 15 minutes. Reduce the heat if the mixture starts to brown. Add ham hock and cook uncovered, stirring and scraping the surface of the pot every 5 minutes, until vegetables start to brown in places and have lost at least half their volume (10 minutes). Add beans and their soaking liquid, tomatoes, and kale, and season again with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then add Parm rinds (if using) and bay leaves, and reduce the heat to a very gentle simmer.
Cook soup with lid askew until beans are very tender, 1 to 3 hours. Add water (or stock, if you have it) as necessary to keep beans submerged by at least 1 inch. In a pot of well-salted boiling water, add pasta and set a timer for 2 to 3 minutes less than the package instructions (pasta should be very al dente). Drain pasta and add to soup, then taste and adjust seasoning. Do not try to skip a step by cooking the pasta in the soup. The noodles will absorb all the available liquid, and the liquid will be thick and gummy.
Serve with Parmigiano for grating over, bread for dunking, olive oil for drizzling, and crushed red pepper.