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Pasta e Ceci Recipe
Pasta e ceci is a creamy soup of peasant origin made with simple and affordable ingredients: boiled chickpeas, extra virgin olive oil, soffritto, rosemary, short pasta like ditalini and vegetable broth.It's a nutritious and delicious traditional Italian recipe, ideal for cold, winter days.There is a trick to making a creamy, thick and flavorful pasta e ceci, which I will explain later. It involves a couple of easy steps that my grandmother taught me when I was snooping around when she was cooking chickpea and pasta soup for us.
Ingredients
- 200 g pasta - 7 oz, ditaloni or short pasta of your choice
- 700 g chickpeas - 1 ½ pound, cooked, that is about 300 g (~¾ pound) of dried chickpeas or 2 cans of canned chickpeas, rinsed and drained.
- 1 onion - medium, finely chopped
- 2 cloves garlic - peeled and left whole
- 1 carrot - medium, finely chopped
- 1 celery stalk - medium, finely chopped
- 2 sprigs rosemary
- 1 ½ liters broth - 6 ⅓ cups, warm, made with vegetable
- salt - to taste
- pepper - to taste
- 50 g olive oil - 4 tablespoons, extra virgin
Instructions
- Chop the onion, celery and carrot very finely.
- Then put the vegetables in a large pot, add garlic and sauté in extra virgin olive oil over very low heat.
- When the onion has become transparent, add the boiled chickpeas and a pinch of fine salt (I used canned chickpeas already boiled, drained of their water and rinsed).
- Stir and then completely cover the chickpeas with the hot vegetable broth.
- Add a sprig of rosemary, cover with a lid - but leave a small gap - and cook over a gentle heat for about 20 minutes. Add a little hot broth from time to time if needed.
- After the cooking time has elapsed, remove the garlic and rosemary, which have already released their aroma.
- Then scoop out with a skimmer about ½ of the chickpeas along with some of the broth from the soup.
- Place them in the glass of an immersion blender. Blend until smooth.
- Pour the chickpea cream into the pot and stir the soup well; it will become creamy right away.
- Bring the chickpea soup back to a boil and add the pasta, taking care to stir often. PLEASE NOTE: While cooking, if you see that the soup is shrinking too much, you can add a little hot water or broth, but a little at a time so as not to thin the soup too much.
- When the pasta is cooked but still al dente (I used ditaloni, which have about 10 minutes of cooking time), turn off the heat. Cover the pot and let the pasta and chickpeas rest for a couple of minutes before serving. Serve the pasta and chickpeas garnished with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and, if you like, freshly ground black pepper.
Nutrition
Calories: 414kcalCarbohydrates: 63gProtein: 15gFat: 12gSaturated Fat: 2gPolyunsaturated Fat: 2gMonounsaturated Fat: 7gSodium: 1012mgPotassium: 479mgFiber: 11gSugar: 10gVitamin A: 2263IUVitamin C: 4mgCalcium: 74mgIron: 4mg
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