So this is a big moment for me.  This is the first time I’ve (successfully) made a meal from a blog.  A couple weeks ago Erin gave me the skinny on all the cool food blogs she reads.  Despite the heavy meat usage, I fell in love with Blue Kitchen.  I saw his post on a distinctly Roman dish he found and it just sounded too good to pass up.  After all, “Do as the Romans Do” right?

Chickpea Soup Pasta Thing

3 cups canned chickpeas
6 cups water
1 whole peeled clove garlic, plus 3 cloves minced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary chopped, plus one small sprig
1/2 teaspoon sea salt [plus more, if needed]
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 ounces pancetta, diced
1 rib celery, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
4 ounces tagliatelle or other ribbon pasta, broken

First start with 2 cups of whole chickpeas in a pot with your 6 cups of water and bring to a gentle boil.  While your waiting for that to happen you can take the time to prep all the other fun stuff you’ll need.  Firstly take a cup of chickpeas and mash them up into a pulp and set aside.  A nice tip is to add some water to the chickpea mashing bowl to help mash it up.  If you do use it, make sure to take the water from the soup bowl as you don’t want the end product to be too watery.

If water boils as slowly on your stove as mine, you’ll still have plenty of time.  So get your other stuff chopped and prepared too.  Once the chickpeas start coming to a rolling boil, toss in the mashed up chickpea and stir it in.  Get a whole clove of garlic and just hit it with the side of a knife.  You don’t want to crush it, just bruise it and have it release its juices, if you accidentally break it like me its fine too.   Throw that in the pot with a small rosemary stick too.  Don’t worry, I thought the meal was turning bad too, but don’t worry it comes together!  Well hopefully you have some ingredients prepared like so…

… and the minced up garlic, it didnt’ make the picture.  (sorry garlic)  Now heat up a skillet on a medium/low flame with some olive oil.  Once its hot toss in the celery, chopped rosemary, and panchetta and saute for a few minutes until you start to see the panchetta brown up.  Then toss in the garlic and stir around for like 45 seconds to a minute (just enough to smell it cookin).  THEN throw in your tomato paste and 1/2 cup of soup mixture to help dilute the paste.  Let that all simmer for a minute, take the whole garlic clove and stick of rosemary out of the soup bowl, then add your new mixture to the main soup bowl.

Now your probably wondering, when the hell do I use this pasta?  Well relax, now break up the pasta in small enough chunks for spoon eating and toss it into the soup bowl.  We used fresh pasta and it worked great.  Not sure how dried pasta would do.  Cook the pasta until just barely done.  You don’t want the pasta to be too soft.  Then your good!  Scoop and serve.