Pasta and chickpea soup
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Pasta and chickpea soup
This dish is lighter than it sounds, but is satisfying enough to have as a one-course meal with bread to dip into the bowl. It is a hit on our cooking courses in Italy, particularly the vegetarian ones.
- Prep Time: 0 hours
- Cook Time: 0 hours
- Total Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
- Yield: 4
Ingredients
- 250g/ 1/2lb dried chickpeas
- A pinch of little flour
- A few small pieces of kombu seaweed (optional)
- 2 large sprigs of rosemary
- 3 cloves garlic
Instructions
- Soak the chickpeas overnight in plenty of cold water and a tablespoon of flour (to help make the chickpeas more digestible).
- Rinse well and cook until tender (2 hours approx) in twice their volume of cold water, adding the seaweed (also to improve digestibility) and whole garlic cloves to the pot.
- Put aside 2 ladlefuls of whole chickpeas, remove the garlic and seaweed and puree the rest of the chickpeas and water.
- In a large pot, gently fry a sprig of rosemary in a good swirl (2-3 tablespoons) of olive oil, until the rosemary has softened and released its aroma.
- Add the chickpea puree and the whole chickpeas to the pot. Bring to the boil.
- Add a little pasta (50g /1.5 oz) per person is sufficient). Ditalini is the shape most used in Italy for soups like this.
- Strip the leaves off the other sprig of rosemary. Mince finely.
- When the pasta is cooked, stir in the fresh minced rosemary.
- Serve dressed with raw extra virgin olive oil and black pepper.
