Pasta Fazool

A soupy bowl of Pasta e Fagiole.

A well-known Italian peasant dish which has been served in many Italian-American households ever since boatloads of Italian peasants/immigrants came to this country is  called pasta e fagiole, which means pasta and beans.

My grandmother made pasta e fagiole once a week.  I always looked forward to being at her house or she being at our house when she made it. Even if you've never tried it -- and if you haven't tried it you're definitely missing out on something delicioso -- you've probably heard of it. But what you heard may have sounded more like pasta fazool.

The proper Italian word for beans, fagiole, is pronounced fazool in the Neapolitan dialect. That's right. All Italians don't speak the world's most beautiful language exactly the same way. They speak it in regional dialects. But all Italians can still understand each other regardless of their dialects. We're clever that way. (And in a whole lot more ways!)

Although my grandparents came from Avellino, which isn't too far from Naples, it's not Naples. But they still spoke Italian in the Neapolitan dialect. In case you need a quick geography lesson, both Naples and Avellino are in the state, district, or region of Campania. (Whatever they call those various areas over there.) All 8 of their children spoke Italian the same way, with the Neapolitan accent. Two of my aunts married guys from the old country -- my Uncle Ralph (Rafaello) and my Uncle Carl (Carlo) -- but both of them were from Naples so they fit right in, dialect wise.

If my father had taught my brother, sister, and I to speak Italian -- which I always wished he had -- I'd be speaking it in the Neapolitan dialect. But I don't. That's because he never taught us to speak it. Period. In any dialect.

Many children of Italian immigrants, those millions of first generation Italian-Americans like my Dad, failed to teach their kids to speak the mother tongue.  Sure, many of us next-generation Italian-Americans know quite a few words in Italian. Certainly the swear words. (I do.)  And if Italian was spoken, say, at your grandparent's home like it was in my family, there's a good chance you understood many things in Italian that were said to you. Otherwise, you sometimes might have gotten a smack on the back of the head. I always thought that was entirely unfair. I mean, you don't teach me to speak Italian but when you tell me to do something, and you tell it to me in Italian, you get impatient with me for not immediately understanding what you said? In a language you didn't teach me to speak? Where's the logic in that?

There are, of course, some reasons why so many first-gen Italian-Americans (who did speak Italian) passed over teaching their 2nd-gen children to speak it. I'm pretty sure I understand some of those reasons even if I don't agree with them.  But that's the stuff of another blog update.

Back to Pasta e fagiole, which is what this update is supposed to be about.

Pasta fazool is easy to make. It's easier to make than a Sunday sauce or braciole or many other Italian dishes.  And for you cheapskates, it's not only easy to make but it's cheap to make. That's how peasant food mostly is: cheap to make, even if you're feeding a small army of peasants with it.

There are many recipes you can find on the web for making pasta e fagiole. If you want to make it authentico, which you should, go with the simplest recipes because the true beauty (and deliciousness) of pasta e fagiole lies in it's simplicity.  Just remember two things: I don't care what the recipe says, to make proper pasta fagiole use cannellini beans, i.e., white kidney beans (either canned or the old school way with dry beans), and ditalini for the pasta. No exceptions! You want to make it right. Right? Then make it right with the right ingredients! Capice?

My grandmother usually made pasta e fagiole with dry cannellini beans. That's because she was very old school about cooking and, well,  just about everything else in her life.  It takes longer to make it that way, with dry beans, but it tastes better too. You can make pasta e fagiole red or white, depending on whether you make it with tomatoes or chicken broth as the base. You can also make it like soup or less soupy. My grandmother made it both ways, red and white, depending on what she had available for the ingredients. Her pasta fazool was less a soup than some pasta fazool I've had. You can make it any of those ways depending on the recipe you go with. They're all really good, sono buoni, and delicioso!

By the way, a lot of Italian restaurants have pasta e fagiole on their menus so maybe that would be a good way for you to get introduced to it if you've never experienced the pleasures of a bowl of pasta fazool.   I used to sometimes eat lunch at an Italian deli near to where I worked and they made pasta e fagiole every Wednesday.  Come to think of it, I think Wednesday was the day of the week my grandmother made pasta e fagiole as well. The deli made their pasta fazool the old school way, the deli's owner, Giuseppe, being from the old country and all.

Dean Martin famously crooned a love song called That's Amore. I know you've heard it. Everyone has heard it. It's the song that talks about how, when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie... One of the other verses goes like this: "When the stars make you drool just-a like pasta fazool that's amore."   

Pasta e fagiole was Dino's favorite dish and now I'm droolin' for some because, just like Dino, amo pasta fazool. That means, "I love pasta fazool," you know, in Italian. Try it if you haven't. You probably will too.