Day 46: Italian Peasant Pasta

Tonight the PashbyMauls recreated a vegetarian pasta dish that was served when we went to visit our friends, the Rinns, a few weeks ago. Of course, it was served with pancetta for the meat lovers in the group at that time. We chose to make this pasta because it doesn’t take a lot of ingredients and because pre-shredded cabbage was on offer at interspar this week. (We have a super-busy week, so the shortcuts are necessary even though I know most Italians would chop their own cabbage!)

When we first tried this dish, I was so surprised because it contains cabbage, and that’s not something that you see used very often in restaurants here. As was explained to me, this dish is for peasants, and so it contains cheap ingredients and combinations of food that you may not find in restaurants.

We’d like to show you how we made dinner and I’d like to say that Drew actually did most of the cooking so he gets major points! First, we gathered all of the ingredients. Please  note that we made a double batch in order to make our lunches for the next day.

Drew has taken over the onion chopping responsibility in this household because he is much better at it then I am, and also because onions make me cry. Points for Drew

The onions are sautéed in Extra Virgin Olive Oil until translucent.

Once finished sauteeing, a drained and rinsed can of chickpeas, rosemary, tomato passata and vegetable broth are added to the pan.

We let this mixture simmer for about 20 minutes and then added the cabbage, plus more tomato passata and veggie broth.

Next, it was time to add the cabbage. We actually added some more broth with the cabbage as well. We let it cook covered for about 30 minutes.

We finally made some pasta and then added it to the pan.

All that was left to do was to enjoy this scrumptious dinner with a glass of red wine! What made the dinner prep and enjoyment of the experience even better is that we were working as a team, and it’s always sweet to support each other in the kitchen and enjoy the fruits of our labors while eating dinner!