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I made it the other day. It was peasant food back in what my father called "the other side". I stayed true to the recipe except for the onions. The key to making good pasta fajole is how you spice the tomato sauce. The sauce is the only thing that you can spice up. The mention of onions leads me to another food that the south Italians ate when there was no beans or pasta. It's called pane e cipola ( bread and onions ). Pane e cipola was eaten when things were really bad.
Exactly!
Pasta e fagioli and so many other "peasant" foods are what you ate when times were tight. For many coming from many parts of Italy back in the day, that could be nearly every night of the week! *LOL*
Of course the tradition came along with immigrants who also found themselves in same economic conditions in USA. When things improved recipes changed to reflect better times.
These peasant dishes were also good because you could feed a lot of mouths with very little. Something many Italian mothers knew about all too well. When you've got five, six or more kids plus a husband and yourself to feed on not very much, you get creative!
Pasta e fagioli and so many other "peasant" foods are what you ate when times were tight. For many coming from many parts of Italy back in the day, that could be nearly every night of the week! *LOL*
Of course the tradition came along with immigrants who also found themselves in same economic conditions in USA. When things improved recipes changed to reflect better times.
These peasant dishes were also good because you could feed a lot of mouths with very little. Something many Italian mothers knew about all too well. When you've got five, six or more kids plus a husband and yourself to feed on not very much, you get creative!
They ate the "peasant" food and survived for thousands of years.
And then they could afford meat and died of circulatory disease and cancer.
I don't know, I have more money than I can shake a stick at and I still eat boiled grains and legumes (pasta e fagioli), just like in days of old, out of choice.
Full circle on the poverty and wealth chain, then.
They ate the "peasant" food and survived for thousands of years.
And then they could afford meat and died of circulatory disease and cancer.
I don't know, I have more money than I can shake a stick at and I still eat boiled grains and legumes (pasta e fagioli), just like in days of old, out of choice.
Full circle on the poverty and wealth chain, then.
Sometimes the old ways are best.
Eat everything in moderation and only what is in season.
What Americans call "Italian" food, versus what you find in Italy are often two different things.
Many Italians rich, poor or otherwise keep to ages old ways of eating. Plates full of pasta drowning in gravy which itself is heavily laden with meat is really an American thing.
I don't know if it's authentic Italian from the southern region or not. I think it was popularized by Olive Garden to be honest. It's very filling.
I make it in a crockpot. I think of it as Italian chili.
I had cousins of Italian ancestry and I tried pasta fazool way before there was an Olive Garden.
Traditionally, it was a meatless meal, that was served during times when Roman Catholics were supposed to refrain from eating meat.
While I am not an "Olive Garden hater", they get this dish wrong. My cousins' grandmother made it with tomato sauce, white beans and elbow macaroni. Her parents were Italian immigrants from the Naples area.
I think it's tasty. But, the original is really nothing like chili.
More to the point many Americans (especially WASPS) made fun of pasta fazool same as they did with another Italian-American food invention; spaghetti and meatballs.
Love it! Never made it but I will now. I used to get it from this Italian take out place by my mom's. Serve with a nice piece of crusty Italian bread and I am good to go.
Every society learned early on that you needed the right combination of amino acids to sustain life. For the rich, there was Meat, eggs and cheese. For the poor there was a grain and legume combination. This holds true for every cuisine
I'm going to take a stab at the phonetic spelling..... pasta fa johl..??
Pasta Fa Zool is the way we pronounced it.
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