The recipe
Ingredients
- 140 g ditalini or small soup pasta
- 240 g cooked cannellini beans, drained
- 50 g carrot, trimmed
- 40 g celery, trimmed
- 50 g onion, peeled
- 1 small garlic clove
- 150 g canned chopped tomatoes with their juice
- 1 tsp tomato paste
- 1 bay leaf
- 1½ tbsp olive oil
- 500 ml lightly salted vegetable stock, plus hot water as needed
- Salt and pepper
Method
- Rinse and drain the beans. Finely dice the carrot, celery and onion, and finely chop the garlic. Heat the stock.
- Warm the oil in a medium saucepan. Cook the carrot, celery and onion over medium-low heat for 7 to 8 minutes, stirring. Add the garlic and tomato paste for 1 further minute.
- Add the tomatoes with their juice, beans, bay leaf and 350 ml hot stock. Simmer gently for about 10 minutes until the diced vegetables are tender, allowing longer if needed.
- Stir in the pasta and cook al dente according to the packet. Stir gently across the bottom regularly and add the remaining hot stock as needed. Add further hot water if required.
- Remove the bay leaf, take the pan off the heat and rest for 2 minutes. Loosen with hot liquid if needed, season with salt and pepper and serve immediately.
Dice the vegetables finely and handle the beans gently
Weigh 240 grams of cooked cannellini beans after draining. Rinse briefly; this recipe does not use the liquid from the tin. Dried beans need separate cooking until fully tender and cannot be substituted within the short method without that extra preparation. Cannellini beans are soft and crush easily. After adding them, use a wooden spoon rather than a whisk and stir gently to keep some whole.
Cut the carrot, celery and onion into small dice roughly three to four millimetres across. This lets them soften during the short sauté and subsequent simmer. Large carrot chunks would need a different schedule. The specified weights refer to trimmed vegetables. Wash the celery and remove tough outer strings if it is particularly fibrous. One bay leaf flavours the pan and is removed before serving, rather than being chopped into the finished dish.
Keep the sauce thick without overcooking the pasta
The pasta cooks directly among the beans and vegetables. Some beans break down as you stir and thicken the liquid together with the pasta starch. There is no need to blend the whole mixture or add flour. Start with 350 millilitres of stock and keep another 150 millilitres hot. Add the chopped tomatoes with their juice. The final stock requirement depends mainly on the pasta shape, pan and evaporation.
During cooking, keep the mixture loose enough for the pasta to sit in liquid and move when stirred. Stir regularly right across the bottom. Add hot stock or further hot water as needed. Check the bite shortly before the packet time ends instead of cooking longer just in case. Serve after a brief rest. To prepare ahead, make the bean and vegetable base separately and cook the pasta in it close to mealtime.