Pasta e fagiole from Where Cooking Begins: Uncomplicated Recipes to Make You a Great Cook (page 224) by Carla Lalli

Where’s the full recipe - why can I only see the ingredients?

Always check the publication for a full list of ingredients. An Eat Your Books index lists the main ingredients and does not include 'store-cupboard ingredients' (salt, pepper, oil, flour, etc.) - unless called for in significant quantity.

Notes about this recipe

  • jessie_458g3h on February 25, 2026

    Another commenter used the word “rewarding” and I think that is the perfect descriptor. Love the food processor technique for the soffrito. Delicious

  • jacqueline_d7uiai on January 17, 2026

    I make this every year around New Year's, deeply comforting and rewarding.

  • Ganga108 on October 13, 2024

    I made a vegetarian version of this recipe in 2019, using borlotti beans, some spices to deepen the flavours as I wasn't using the meat, and made it very thick. One of my favourite Pasta e Fagiole recipes.

  • CheesyKranskyLove on October 03, 2022

    I bought the book after trying this recipe so it's that good. I recommend checking out Carla's video of this on youtube where she explains the sofrito process very well. My ham hock was ridiculously large so I doubled the recipe and froze the rest.

  • TTTLauren on April 27, 2022

    Wowza this is tasty. I did not use a food processor. I manually chopped the leeks and garlic into small bits and the carrots i used a large hole grater. Sweating the sofrito down (phase 1), then adding the bacon I subbed for the ham hock, and frying the sofrito down further (phase 2) develops a nice sweetness to this dish. I used little ring pasta with some tiny pepe pasta bc I had no ditalini on hand it was great because really, this is like adult version of spaghetti-ohs. Also, I used a dutch oven and after adding the tomatos ( i used crushed) and herbs i put it in the oven mostly covered until the beans were done, about an hour and a half. Overall the dish takes about 3 hours. Awesome!

  • chefmichael on October 19, 2021

    This recipe makes a very good soup. But for me a few caveats and call-outs are necessary. First, carrots and leeks do not release a lot of liquid or get very juicy, so the cooking instructions for the sofrito (that stretch for quite a few minutes) are difficult to follow. This sofrito will cook down and will brown, which I think is what Carla is after, but the temperature adjustments, timings, and lid on/off, don't really align to the ingredients. Just cook without too much browning and scrape bottom of pot when needed for 20 +/- minutes until you've cooked the sofrito down to concentrated goodness and at that point some browning will happen and that is fine as Carla suggests it should. It really does make a difference in the final outcome. Second, this needs more liquid added during the cooking, as the water needed to cover 1/2 pound of dried beans prior to cooking is nowhere near enough to make for a soup once you've added it. I needed 4 more cups of veggie stock at the end.

You must Create an Account or Sign In to add a note to this book.

Reviews about this recipe

This recipe does not currently have any reviews.

You are reporting a broken online recipe link to EYB. Please confirm that you want the report submitted. Please also suggest the correct URL for this online recipe to the below textbox.