Pasta e Ceci (Italian Pasta and Chickpea Soup)
Pasta and chickpea soup is a budget friendly one-dish meal with lots of texture and hearty flavour. This Italian pasta e ceci soup is like a thick stew and consists of a creamy broth, onions, celery, garlic, Rosemary, chickpeas and pasta.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 ½ cups diced onion
- 1 ½ cups diced celery
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh Rosemary
- 1 (540) ml tin chickpeas drained and rinsed
- 1.2 L chicken or vegetable broth (5 cups), possibly more
- 1 cup small shell pasta
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 Parmigiano Reggiano cheese rind optional
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ¼ cup chopped fresh parsley for garnish
- ⅓ cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese for garnish
Instructions
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In a 4 or 5 qt Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, celery, garlic and Rosemary. Sauté the vegetables while stirring occasionally until they are just tender and the garlic is fragrant, about 4 minutes.
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Add chickpeas and broth (reserve the pasta to add later). Cover, and bring to a gentle boil. Cook for 10 minutes until the vegetables and chickpeas are softened.
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Remove the Dutch oven from the heat. With a slotted spoon, remove about half of the onions, celery and chickpeas, put them in a medium bowl and set them aside. Leave all the broth and remaining half of onion, onions, celery and chickpeas in the Dutch oven.
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With an immersion blender puree the broth and ingredients in the Dutch oven until it becomes a creamy consistency. Then add back the reserved onions, celery and chickpeas to the Dutch oven.
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Return the Dutch oven to medium-high heat and bring the soup back up to a light boil. Add in the pasta, bay leaf and Parmigiano Regganio rind (if using). Season the soup with salt and pepper.
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Cook while stirring until the soup comes to a gentle boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and cover the soup. Cook until the pasta is plump and tender and expands in size, about 20 - 25 minutes, while stirring occasionally.
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Remove the bay leaf and Parmigiano Reggianio rind. Stir in the parsley and garnish with grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese just before serving.
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If the soup gets too thick for your liking, thin it out with some additional broth.
Recipe Notes
- With a slotted spoon remove about half of the onions, celery and chickpeas (before adding pasta) and set aside in a bowl. Blend remaining portion of vegetables and all the broth in the pot. Then the reserved vegetable chunks and chickpeas are put back into the soup.
- If you don’t have an immersion blender to puree the soup, then transfer the portion that needs to be puréed to a blender then return the blended portion to the Dutch oven.
- Pasta e ceci is best with small shaped pasta. I used small shell pasta but the recipe works with a huge variety of pasta shapes like ditalini (short tubes), elbow macaroni, bow ties or short cut penne.
- This is not a pasta dish where the pasta is to be cooked al dente. For this recipe you want the pasta to cook until plump and very tender.
- I keep a stash of Parmesan rinds in a zipper bag in my freezer. If you happen to have any, one piece of rind adds a lot of umami flavour to the soup. Remove and dispose the rind before serving the soup.
- For a vegetarian or vegan soup use vegetable broth, and in the case of vegan, skip the Parmesan cheese and replace it with tablespoons of nutritional flakes.
- For a gluten free soup, use gluten free pasta types such as brown rice pasta, chickpea pasta, quinoa pasta or a multigrain pasta that’s made from corn, millet, buckwheat, quinoa, rice or amaranth.
- If the soup gets too thick for your liking (and it will thicken after it sits for a while), you can thin it out with some additional chicken or vegetable broth.