Recipe: Pasta Fagioli with Leeks (Deconstructed)

"Deconstructed" pasta fagioli

At the end of the work week when I've run out of my "Sunday make-ahead" components and the freshest vegetables, or if I just run out of cooking energy or time, one of my fall-back dinners is some kind of pasta-bean combination and a vegetable on the side.  This may involve tomato sauce -- not a trigger for me, but I know tomatoes can be on the do-not-eat list for many GERDites -- but tastes fantastic on its own, using the greens and beans as flavoring.  Eat slowly, savor the complementary flavors, and enjoy!

PASTA FAGIOLI WITH LEEKS (DECONSTRUCTED)

I usually serve this as separate components that can be mixed on one's plate, or not, as desired.   The versatility is endless -- different pasta, different beans, different onion and/or greens, and you've got a new dish each week for a year!  I often grab a small portion for lunch the next day.   One sanity-saving trick for me in managing GERD is to find dishes I can easily divide up into small, GERD-friendly portions, and this is a good one.  

Ingredients:

High quality pasta: I favor Barilla's high-protein line (the yellow box) for flavor and the protein value (the flour includes legume meal) but this is becoming harder to find.   Update:  I've switched to DeCecco, which is much tastier than Barilla!  I've decided I don't need to eat whole wheat products every meal -- a good white roll or baguette, white flour pasta, and white rice once or twice a week is "okay" with me and seems okay with my gut.   Barilla is a favorite brand of mine overall, and I enjoy sorting through the huge selection at Eataly (where the boxes are "direct" from Italy, in all-Italian language packaging).   In the photo example above, I'm using cellentani pasta, a durum wheat corkscrew style pasta with a good "bite."  DeCecco is also from Italy, and holds up very well in cooking.   The wheat variety is excellent!

Dried beans: I am cooking almost exclusively with my own made-from-scratch beans these days, buying them dry at the Cayuga Organics greenmarket stand, soaking for 2 hours and boiling for 1 hour.   The freshly dried greenmarket beans do not require overnight soaking, a big plus in organizing my meals.  These beans are so flavorful on their own they become almost a "spice" to the pasta.

Greens:  In this case, I used leeks, steam-sauteed in a bit of olive oil until softened.   Greens (kale, chard, bok choy, spinach, and so on) steam-sauteed with olive oil and fresh garlic work very well too.