PASTA FAZOOL!!!!!

Yes, you know the expression, don't you? And you know all the bad things about it: it's supposed to give you gas, indigestion, and all that jazz. It's for poor people, it tastes terrible, blah blah blah.

Well, have you ever had it? Or have you ever made it? Hmmmmmm?????

C'mon now, Annalena and you, gentle reader , are gonna make this wonderful, soul restoring dish, that is really somewhere between liquid and solid, and you're going to find out that you love it.

This is another one of those dishes where there are many detours you can take: canned beans, dried beans, or fresh beans? (answer: yes). Stars, broken spaghetti, tubetti, ditalini, or what? (answer: yes). Meat or no meat? (answer: yes). What vegetables? What herbs? What liquid? Tomatoes, or no tomatoes (answer: yes).

At its most fundamental, pasta e fagioli (the "proper" spelling) is sauteed aromatic vegetables, beans, and pasta, with olive oil and black pepper as a finish, with perhaps some grated cheese. Tomatoes, bacon or pancetta or anything like that is optional. Herbs are too, but they are highly recommended. WATER no chicken stock, please. You have what is very much a delicate soup here, believe it or not, and chicken stock destroys the balance BUT - just like in minestrone, a really fine trick is to put a parmesan rind in when you're cooking the soup, if you have one.

The beans? Well, I don't like using canned beans. To me, they are too soft, too overcooked, and they fall apart in the cooking of the soup. I like the beans to retain their integrity and shape, so I almost always use fresh frozen shell beans, if I have them around, or dried beans. The plus for dried beans is that you always have them handy, and they never go bad. The minus is that you do have to soak them overnight. But really, this is a minor step. Before you go to bed, take a cup and a half of dried beans (use a dry measure), and cover them with three times the amount of water. Go to bed.

What kind of beans? Well, I'm a snob here and I use borlottis, or cranberry beans. You can use others. If you do, I would stay away from black beans, because the color makes this look "not right" to me, as well as kidney beans, because they get too soft. Use canellini beans, and you have a dish that is more Northern than Southern.

Now, the next day, before you make the soup, I want you to do something very, very important. And that's to cook your pasta separately. Get half a pound of whatever pasta you like: I DO prefer the baby stars: s telline. For some reason, the texture on the edges just makes me smile. But use whatever small pasta you have. If you still aren't sure, go to that good Italian grocery store and ask for a "soup pasta." If you're too intimidated, for heaven's sakes, get some spaghetti, break it up smaller than you think you should, and use that. Now, cooking the pasta separately is important, because if you cook it with the rest of the soup, it will soak up all of your broth, and you'll get a big, thick mess. A tasty mess, but a mess nonetheless. So cook pasta the way you normally would and then - I k now, shocking - drain it, and wash it with cold water. Put it aside.

Now, we're gonna get to work. We start with the vegetables and herbs. I've done this a lot of ways, and while a combination of carrots, celery, onion and garlic are the classic combination, I dispense with the carrots. They make the soup too sweet for me, but if you like that sweetness, by all means. You will want about a half a cup worth of celery and carrot if you're using it, and a cup of onion. I use a LOT of garlic. Six cloves. Sometimes I use pancetta, sometimes I don't. If you use it, chop it up with the rest of the vegetables and garlic you're using. A food processor is a really useful thing to have here, but if you don't have it, just get that knife out and chop, chop chop. This is a peasant soup, so don't feel compelled to reduce everything to even, anally retentive pieces.

Now the herbs. Here, I veer away from the standard again, which teaches you to chop up fresh herbs with the vegetables. I always use rosemary in this soup, and there simply is no way to avoid picking up a nasty rosemary needle when you chop it. So I take two big branches and combine them with the veggies and the pork, if I'm using it, and just mix it all together.

Put this aside now, and start cooking your beans. To do that, dump the water from the night before, and add an equal amount of new, cold water. Bring the pot to a boil, and simmer. DON'T ADD SALT (We're coming to that). Add a cheese rind, if you have it. After they've simmered for about ten minutes, put enough olive oil in the bottom of a pan to cover it, and add your vegetables and herbs and pork. Start sauteeing, and keep going for five minutes. I highly recommend tomatoes. Many recipes suggest just a bit, I like a lot: I use at least a 16 ounce can, that I've crushed with my fingers. Add the tomatoes to the vegetables, lower your heat, and cover the pan. Then cook for ten minutes. Add more salt to this than you think you'll need.

By now, your beans will have been cooking for about twenty minutes. Pull one out, run it under cold water (it's really hot), and taste it. Is it soft enough for you? If not, cook the beans for another ten minutes and keep going until you have them where you want them (nya ha ha. I've got you just where I want you Mr. Bean. Ok, ok, I'll stop).

You now have the three components of your soup: your vegetables, your beans in a water broth, and your pasta. Know what you do? Dump everything in the bean pot, stir it, take out the cheese rind, and taste it. You will probably need more salt, and then add some pepper too. Let this sit until it's cool enough to store, because this is a soup that improves immensely upon sitting for a day.

When you're ready to eat it, heat it up gently, and if you are so inclined (and yes, I always am so inclined), add a dribble of a good olive oil to it. You can also sprinkle some freshly grated cheese on it too. Then serve it forth, with salad and bread. And you have a classic, potentially vegetarian, potentially vegan soup that is really a meal in a bowl. Don't feel like salad? Don't eat it. Feeling you'll get logy from too many carbs ? Don't eat the bread (then have some fried polenta instead. OOPS. Am I giving away my allegiance to the carbohydrate goddess?).

Now, I will let you in on a secret. This is one of the dishes my grandmother would make a lot, and I would always refuse to eat it. And she'd stick a hand on her ample hip (sort of like I do today), point without shaking her finger (me too!), and through clenched teeth exclaim "One day, you will want to eat this soup every single meal."

Of course she was right. And if you make it, I bet you'll want to, too.

So give it a try. Make some variations on it. Tell me about them. Or better yet, make some and invite me over for a bowl of it. I'll bring the red wine.