While pasta mista is a great solution for home cooks, Whims doesn't want to undersell it. She finished the dish with torn fresh basil leaves and a very generous drizzle of olive oil.ĭespite its very humble ingredients, the final dish was absolutely delicious. She allowed the chickpeas and pasta to cook together, adding more of the chickpea liquid until it looked 'slurpy and thick,' which was about 5 minutes. Then she added the cooked pasta and some colatura (essentially Italian fish sauce, made with anchovies) to taste. She mashed the chickpeas with a potato masher, making sure the chickpeas retained some texture. She transferred the cooked chickpeas to the oil, adding some of the reserved cooking liquid to create a soupy consistency. In a skillet, Whims heated a few tablespoons of olive oil, imbuing it with flavor by adding crushed red pepper (a whole dried chile would also work) and garlic cloves (which were browned and then removed from the oil). Wouldn't it have a more fresh taste just to add clean water?') If it's not high-quality pasta made from high-quality wheat, you're just adding cooked, boiled water. 'I studied with Marcella Hazan,' the chef explains, 'and she hates the fact that chefs use pasta water. (Interesting side note: Whims counters conventional wisdom on always saving some of the pasta water for sauce.

Whims cooked the pasta in a pot of boiling water until 2/3 of the shapes were cooked through, then drained it. Avoid especially thick shapes, like gnochetti by the time they're done cooking, the rest of the pastas will be too mushy. (Wow, pasta names are the greatest.) If you use a longer shape, like bucatini, reginette, or spaghetti, simply break it into pieces so it fits in with the other pastas. (You can also purchase 'pasta mista' in a premixed bag at stores like Eataly, which, as Whims put it, 'is kind of cool but also kind of takes the soul out of it.') Whims's recommendations: campanelle, casarecce, cavatappi, conchiglie, elbow macaroni, farfalle, fusilli, radiatori, rigatoni, rotini, rotelle, or tortiglioni. Once the chickpeas were tender, she strained out the vegetables, saving the liquid.Ĭhoose your pasta shapes wisely. She covered them with salted water (by an inch) and simmered them for 20–30 minutes with cherry tomatoes, onion, garlic, carrots, celery (all chopped roughly enough so that they'd be easy to remove from the water).

Whims would normally begin with dried chickpeas, but for expediency in the test kitchen, she used canned. (And yes, it's madness.) Here's how Whims does it:Ĭook chickpeas. There is, however, a method to the madness.

Types of macaroni shells