If you can pronounce pasta e fagioli, there’s a good chance you’re Italian, a regular at Olive Garden, or a big fan of Dean Martin.
As Dino sang: "When the stars make you drool, just like pasta fazool, that's amore!"
Translated as pasta and beans, this hearty soup came to the U.S. with Italian immigrants, and every family has their own variation on the dish.
Gerri Kaplan carried her family’s take on pasta e fagioli from her native Brooklyn to Luzerne County by way of Florida, together with other Italian dishes passed down through the generations.
“I started cooking when I was really young,” said Kaplan, of Kingston. “My parents worked all day, so my mom taught me a lot of different recipes, and I started cooking.”
Pasta e fagioli can include a variety of vegetables, may or may not include meat, and usually is topped off with grated parmesan cheese.
Kaplan adapted the soup and many other dishes for preparation in a kosher kitchen: Kaplan is the wife of Rabbi Larry Kaplan, spiritual leader of Temple Israel in Wilkes-Barre. They met at a synagogue in Florida, where Gerri was a preschool teacher.
“Once I married the rabbi, I continued cooking Italian. And, you know, it was kind of hard at first, because in the Jewish religion, we don't mix milk and meat,” said Kaplan, who converted from Catholicism to Judaism.
Jewish dietary laws, known as kashrut, govern what foods can be eaten by the faithful as well as how they are inspected, processed, prepared, and served. For Kaplan, that means many of her favorite Italian dishes are on the banned list.
“I thought to myself, ‘How am I going to make my chicken parm?’ I couldn’t do that anymore,” Kaplan said, referring to the dish that combines poultry and parmesan cheese.
She learned to get creative.
“So we make eggplant parmesan. We make lasagna with just cheese and vegetables, things like that,” Kaplan said. “That’s how we incorporate a lot of the Italian recipes for our kosher home.”
Pasta e fagioli proved to be a perfect fit. While some families may incorporate meat or use a meat-based stock, vegetarian versions of the dish are common. As Kaplan pointed out, the beans provide protein, which help make the soup nutritious as well as filling.
Rabbi Kaplan spoke about the process of bringing two cultures together to make one family.
“It was fascinating to me, coming from a pretty Jewish background, to end up marrying someone who can't stand gefilte fish -- I mean even the smell of it,” he said with a chuckle.
“When we got married, she had three kids already, and they were raised in an Italian home that wasn't kosher, obviously,” he added. “And the first time she made spaghetti and meatballs and they couldn't put cheese on it? Just looking at their eyes, they were almost in tears.”
After 28 years of marriage the rabbi is happy to see his wife carrying on a tradition that is so meaningful to her.
“She really enjoys it, and it's nice keeping it in the family,” he said. “We've done quite well with the mixture of Jewish and Italian, and I think it's been great.”
Pasta e fagioli also is a dish that lends itself to easy preparation, something that is critical for a large, busy family.
The Kaplans, both 65, have 12 children, soon to be 13: Gerri had three from her first marriage and Rabbi Kaplan had one, they had one together, they have adopted seven –- with another to be adopted in October –- and have fostered many children over the years. Add four grandchildren (so far), and the huge kitchen table in their Kingston home makes perfect sense.
While the older girls like to help with cooking, Gerri said she still does most of it – on top of her work as principal of the temple's religious school.
"I cook probably five out of seven days, lots of homemade food," she said.
Her pasta e fagioli is simple to prepare.
The pasta — ditalini or small shells — can be made in advance. Either way, Kaplan adds it to the soup later in the process. Put it in too early "and it sucks up all the juice," she said.
The next key ingredient: cannellini beans, and canned are just fine, Kaplan said. Some people prefer chickpeas or other types of beans, she added.
She sautees vegetables and garlic in olive oil, sometimes adding mushrooms. Then she adds stewed tomatoes, vegetable soup powder, the beans and water. The mix is brought to a boil.
The final ingredient, once everything else is boiling: fresh greens. Sometimes Kaplan uses spinach, but she used escarole this time.
"Escarole is really the big favorite around here," she said.
Kaplan chopped large bunches of the leafy vegetable as the pot of soup bubbled away on the stove.
"It looks like tons, but it all kind of melts down," she said. Indeed it did, blending into the rich broth.
The pasta is added last.
Kaplan set dishes of the steaming soup onto the table before returning with an antique cheese shredder.
"It was my grandmother's so it's gotta be over 100 years old," she said.
Into the shredder Kaplan placed a hunk of creamy parmesan cheese, gently turning the handle to churn out delicate, fragrant strands.
"Kind of like Olive Garden, yeah," she said.
Kaplan wryly admitted that yes, she and her family do sometimes like the chain restaurant — and its pasta e fagioli — but there's just nothing like the homemade version.
"We make it at least once a month," she said. "It's good, and when you have leftovers you can just pop it out of the refrigerator and heat it up."
Pasta e fagioli
Ingredients
- 1 pound small pasta (ditalini or small shells)
- 5 carrots, sliced
- 5 stalks celery chopped
- 1 onion chopped
- 2 tablespoons garlic
- 2 bunches escarole
- 4 cans cannellini beans
- 3 packets Lipton vegetable soup mix
- 1 can stewed tomatoes
- Salt and pepper as desired
- 10 cups water
Directions
1. Saute celery, carrots, onion, and garlic.
2. Add stewed tomatoes.
3. Add soup mix and water.
4. Add beans and bring to a boil.
5. Cook on low for 45 minutes.
6. Boil pasta and add to each bowl as you serve. Pasta will absorb the liquid.
