Cooking Night : Italian Part II, White Bean and Pasta Soup



White bean and pasta soup was a featured recipe earlier this year from Bon Appetit. However, as it sometimes happens, the recipe didn't work with what was available at groceries here so it required a fair bit of modification.

The original recipes can be found here and here.

The original recipe called for cooking cannellini beans (aka white kidney beans) with a mixture of spices prior to preparing the soup. Oddly, there were no white kidney beans to be found in dried form. Fortunately, we located already cooked canned white kidney beans. If you're in Winston-Salem, save yourself some time...the only grocery that carries them is Lowe's Foods. Since the beans were cooked with seasonings in the original recipe prior to being added to the soup, the seasonings were a guess and were supplemented along as it was taste tested. Mini farfellini pasta was selected because they were so cute. Seriously. Pasta is often selected based on cuteness if I'm making it. That's how I wound up eating radiatore. I thought it looked like small car radiators and that seemed very fun that day. Anyway, here's the soup and how we made it with seasoning edits. Keep in mind if you make this, you may want more salt or garlic. Also for the non carrot lovers...while the carrots were in there, the flavors melded and they didn't have a distinct taste in the soup.



Ingredients

3 Tbsp olive oil
2 c. chopped onions (we added a little more but we like onions)
2/3 c. chopped carrot
2/3 c. chopped celery
2 15 oz cans cooked white kidney beans
1 large tomato
1 c. mini farfellini
1/3 c. chopped green onions (everything except the top dark green parts and roots)
3 cloves of garlic
1-2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper
3 1/2 c. water

Instructions

Heat oil in the soup pot.

Add onions(both types), carrots, garlic, and celery and cook until soft. Bon appetit says 12 min. I don't know that it took that long but its an estimate.

Add water, beans, salt, pepper, and tomato.

Bring to a simmer and reduce heat while simmering for 25 minutes.

Add pasta and cook until done. (8-10 minutes)

Enjoy!

Comments

  1. This sounds great! Have you thought about using chicken broth or vegetable broth instead of water?

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  2. That's a good idea. This tasted good without it so I suppose it would depend on how you liked the base. This was the first time this recipe was made (by us anyway). Since we were already changing it some, I didn't think about adding further changes.

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