Ingredients
Soak your beans overnight or at
the very least for a few hours before cooking the soup – in a pinch you
could conceivably get away with using canned beans.
4 cups water or a mild vegetable stock
2 cups pre-soaked ceci beans (also known as chickpeas or garbanzo beans)
6 ounces fresh or dried pappardelle
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
Instructions
Bring the stock and ceci beans to a simmer and cook until the beans are
cooked through. Taste and season with salt – you will need more or less
depending on how salty your stock (bouillon) is. I wanted my broth to have a
bit more body so I scooped out a small handful of cooked beans (20 or so),
pureed them with a hand blender, and added them back into the pot -an
optional step and not necessary if you opt for a homemade chicken stock
which tends to have more body (from the gelatin in the bones)…this was my
vegetarian work-around.
While the beans are cooking, boil the pappardelle in well-salted water.
Drain and set aside 1/3 of the cooked noodles, you are going to fry these.
Also, hang on to a cup (or two) of the pasta water in case you need a bit
more liquid for your soup.
Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet. Add the reserved noodles and
fry them up until they are nice and crispy, don’t let the oil get overly
hot, it should be nicely fragrant and able to do its crisping job. Just
remember, you are going to use it later in the recipe, so you don’t want it
to get to its smoking point.
Add the boiled-not-fried noodles into the bean pot and taste for seasoning,
salt if needed (add in the reserved pasta water here if you want a bit more
broth, but I like this soup light on the liquid). Spoon about 3 tablespoons
of the olive oil from the skillet into the soup and serve with a generous
sprinkling of the fried noodles mixed in at the last minute. A drizzle of
your favorite table olive oil is a great way to finish the soup.
