Pasta e Fagioli

Takes a few ingredients to pull this one together, but it is so worth it

Ingredients:

• 4 Scrubbed Carrots
• 1 Medium Onion
• 3 Celery Stalks
• 6 Good Sized Garlic Cloves
• Olive oil
• Salt and Pepper
• 1 Can Crushed Tomatoes(28oz), without tomato concentrate or puree
• 8 Ounces small or medium dry white beans
• Chicken stock
• 8-10 Ounces Chopped Spinach Leaves
• 8 Ounces small dried pasta shapes
• Parm Rind (optional)
• 2-3 Bay Leaves
• Pork hock
• 2 Slices Bacon, uncooked
• Fresh Parmesan to serve

Instructions:

1. The night before planning to make soup, set the beans to soak in a large bowl. Cover beans with at least one inch of water, set in fridge and soak overnight.
2. To start the soup, scrub the carrots and roughly chop, peel the garlic, roughly chop the Celery and onion. In the bowl of a very large food processor, or in batches, pulse all the vegetables until they are fine chopped but not a puree.
3. Heat a large stock pot over medium low heat, and heat about 1/3 cup olive oil. Add the finely chopped garlic, carrots, onion and Celery, season well with salt and pepper. Slowly cook the veg down, without adding color. If things are cooking too quickly turn down the heat and continue to cook. The goal is to sweat down the veg until they are soft, juicy and reducing in volume without browning yet. Cooking the veggies down should take 20-30 minutes.
4. Once the veg base is looking good, add the ham hock. Roughly chop the raw bacon and also add it to the pot. Continue cooking an additional 10-20 minutes until it seems like the veg has reduced in volume by half.
5. Add the beans and their soaking liquid to the pot along with the crushed tomatoes and at least four cups of chicken stock. Add more stock or water to ensure that the beans are always fully submerged.
6. Bring everything to a boil, add the bay leaves and the Parmesan rind if using. Reduce heat to a gentle simmer and cook for 1-2 hours. Add in the spinach and stir well.
7. Cook pasta in a separate pot of well salted boiling water, 1-3 minutes less than package instructions indicate. The pasta should be slightly toothsome as it will continue to cook a bit in the soup.
8. Pull the pork hock out if the soup and shred any available meat off the bone. Discard skin, bones and fat chunks. Return usable shredded meat to the soup. Fish out the parm rind and bay leaves and discard.
9. Once the pasta is cooked to desired doneness, drain the pasta and stir into the soup.
10. Ladle the soup into bowls, garnish with fresh shredded parm and a drizzle of olive oil. Goes excellent with a bit of crusty toasty bread.

Enjoy!

Notes:

Holy goodness, this soup was so tasty! The veg base that we start with is called a sofritto and that is the ticket to flavor town in this recipe.

This soup is amazingly rich, hearty and so comforting on a cold winters night. Plus since it is so veg heavy, with beans it'll fill up hungry tummies so well and keep them full!

* update, froze some, added some extra chicken stock as the pasta had taken in more liquid while cooking and it was just as delicious reheated after being frozen, still had lots of flavor.