MissMeliss: Escribition

Last night, I posted a ‘bits and pieces’ entry that amounted to post-it note-sized blurbs. One of them mentioned the dish that I grew up calling “Basta Fazool” (and note - the b in basta is barely a b - it’s not quite a p, though…if you haven’t heard Southern Italian accents filtered through New Jersey, you will NOT understand this sound. But there it is.) Progresso makes a canned version, but it’s so salty it’s really scary (this is a problem with MOST canned soups, actually). If you want to be all proper, the correct name of the dish is ‘paste e fagioli,’ where really just means ‘noodles and beans’.

I don’t usually surf the net looking for recipes when I’m making something I grew up with, but I did last night, and found that the version of Basta Fazool that I grew up with, which is meatless, is not the standard version. Apparently it’s much more common to use chicken stock as a base, and include bacon or pancetta in the soup. I don’t do this, but Laura who has a groovous blog called Cucina Testa Rossa does, and the recipe she uses can be found in this entry.

My own recipe is in the extended entry.
(more…)

The email I use for NetFlix is:
melissa AT missmeliss DOT com
Feel free to add me as a friend, just comment or leave me a note so I know who you are.