Pašta Fižol with Apache Beans

I was starting to stock our pandemic pantry with hefty bags of dried beans. Garbanzos and black beans were easy to find online. My husband hinted that I might want to find some of the beans I had used in my Slovenian recipes. White beans, perhaps?

But my thoughts immediately went to another variety, the speckled red-and-white beans known as Roman or borlotti beans.

These unusual beans were the foundation for a special soup my late mother recalled fondly from her Cleveland childhood but had trouble describing. My mother's mystery bean soup turned out to be a delicious variation of pašta fižol, in which the beans are pureed before adding the pasta--in this case, homemade square egg noodles Slovenians call bleki.

Borlotti beans are considered heirloom beans and can be hard to locate even in normal times. I did find some online--for a price. But my search pulled up another bean variety that was described as a good alternative--in the same bean family, and with a similar red-and-white pattern.They even cost less than the borlotti beans and would arrive faster.

So I decided to take a chance.  When the beans arrived, I was struck by the vivid and distinct pattern.

I also learned they had a fascinating international pedigree: Sold by a Canadian company, imported by a company in New Jersey and grown in Kyrgyzstan--from a strain of pinto beans first developed in the United States in the 1980s!

A few days later, I decided to make traditional pašta fižol, using the un-pureed recipe I had made originally. It just happened to be Trubar Day, a fitting time to celebrate my Slovenian heritage.

Naturally, I had to make a few more pandemic-required adjustments. Instead of bacon or pancetta, I used the only smoked meat we had available: Italian chicken sausage. Catsup instead of tomato paste. And store-bought Italian dried pasta, since I didn't have the time or energy for handmade bleki.

Despite the substitutions and the pasta shortcut, the dish was a success. Those Apache beans (seen in the before-and-after photos below) seemed to be a more than adequate substitute for borlotti beans. Their pretty colors were still faintly visible after cooking and the flavor was rich and slightly sweet.

I couldn't wait to use them again!

After: Apache beans, cooked

Before: Apache beans, dried

Pašta Fižol (with pandemic substitutions) 


1 lb. dried Roman beans (borlotti or cranberry beans) Apache beans, cooked
5 oz. turkey bacon or pancetta  Italian chicken sausages, 5-10 oz.
2-3 T. olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 T. flour
2 t. paprika
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T. tomato paste catsup
1 c. hot water
2 t. marjoram
1 bay leaf
1/2 t. pepper
salt to taste
2 t. vinegar
homemade bleki/square noodles  4 ounces dried Italian pasta elbows
parsley to garnish


For detailed cooking instructions, see the original post:  https://slovenianroots.blogspot.com/2012/05/slovenian-dinner-week-week-12-pasta.html

Slovenian Dinner Week 12: Pašta Fižol with Bleki

Menu
Pašta Fižol with Bleki  (Pasta and Bean Soup)
Red Cabbage Slaw
Bread (if you really need it!)


Finally, I had a clearer picture of my grandmother's elusive Mystery Bean Soup.  It was a Roman bean and pasta soup, made with square noodles.  In my mother's family, the Slovenian name for those noodles, bleki, had become the name for the soup itself.

I couldn't find anything like this in my trio of vintage Slovenian American cookbooks.  But an online search turned up a handful of recipes for Slovenian pasta and bean soup, or pašta fižol.  So this looked like another recipe the Slovenians had adapted from their Italian neighbors.

I found a recipe on the official Slovenian Tourist Board website, here.  It served as a good guide, although much was left to the imagination.  The type of beans, the style of pasta, and the quantities of seasonings were unspecified.  The photo seemed to show red kidney beans and commercially made macaroni elbows.  In a delightful American blog called Soupsong, I found an almost identical recipe here,  which specified kidney beans and small pasta shapes.  It also spelled out the cooking method a little more clearly.

My first task was to find those Roman beans, also known as borlotti beans or cranberry beans.  They can be hard to track down.  But I found them in the special "heirloom bean" section of our local organic produce market in Berkeley.  Turkey bacon seemed like a good substitute for pancetta.

The pasta, of course, would be homemade bleki.  This turned out to be an easy enough task, using the same the egg noodle recipe from last week's dinner.  But I figure bleki deserves a separate post, since it was so central to this dinner!


1 lb. dried Roman beans (also known as borlotti or cranberry beans)
5 oz. turkey bacon (or, to be traditional, pancetta)
2-3 T. olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 T. flour
2 t. paprika
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T. tomato paste
1 c. hot water
2 t. marjoram
1 bay leaf
1/2 t. pepper
salt to taste
2 t. vinegar
homemade bleki/square noodles (recipe follows) or 4 oz. dried pasta
parsley to garnish


Soak the beans overnight in water to cover.  Drain, cover with fresh water, and simmer until tender, 30-60 minutes.   Do not drain.  Set aside.

In a separate pot, boil the bleki (or other pasta) in salted water until barely done.  Drain, rinse in cold water, coat with a little oil, and set aside.

In saucepan, brown turkey bacon in oil.  Add onion, fry until golden.  Stir in flour, let brown.  Remove from heat, add garlic and paprika.  Add tomato paste and hot water and stir to make a smooth sauce.

Add the sauce to the undrained beans.  Add the bleki or pasta and seasonings.  Bring to a boil, cook for about 15 minutes or until thick.  Add salt and vinegar to taste.  Garnish with parsley to serve.

The verdict?  Delicious!  And it was brought to a whole other level by the homemade bleki.

Was this really the Mystery Soup my mother recalled so fondly?   I'm not sure.   Next time, I might try making a separate brown roux with the flour and oil, and then add it.

And maybe I should have pureed the beans.  Here is the very brief bean soup recipe from another Slovenian tourist site:

"First, you puree the beans, thicken with roux, and boil home-made noodles, bleki (noodle dough squares), or other pasta."

Maybe I'll try it again that way, before I risk a "black-eh" taste test with my mother!


Update:  Using the guidelines above, I did make a final attempt to create my mother's "black-eh."
To find out how it turned out, go here!

Week 12: Mystery Bean Soup

I was hot on the trail of my grandmother's Mystery Soup.

It was a food recollection that surfaced a few years ago.  My mother remembered a special thick bean soup my grandmother used to bring to her, in the early years of her marriage.  No one had a car, so Grandma had to take the bus to deliver it. The name sounded like "black-y" with an exaggerated Slovenian accent.

I could picture it so clearly.  My grandma on the bus, in a housedress.  Week after week, carrying a big  jar of her precious homemade soup to the young married couple.  I figured it must be a thick dark porridge, something like black bean soup.

I kept looking through my Slovenian cookbooks, but I couldn't find a soup that matched the name or the description.

"You're sure that's what it was called?"  I asked my mother.

Yes.  She kept repeating the name, with growing insistence.  Now it sounded more like "blahk-eh."

"It was made with black beans, right?"

No. I had guessed wrong.  They used Roman beans.  Big, speckled and pink.

Pink?

I was wrong about one more detail.  It wasn't my sweet, long-suffering Grandma who delivered the soup.  It was my surly grandfather.  And he did it just once.

So much for the family legend. But I still wanted to find that soup.

I started plugging alternative spellings for "black-eh" into search engines, along with "soup".

Finally, I got a possible hit.  Bleki.  But it referred to a square-shaped noodle or pasta.  Sometimes served on its own, but also used in soup.

Like bean and pasta soup?  I had come across a number of recipes for that dish during my online search,  using unspecified pasta or noodles.

In Slovenian, the soup is called pašta fižol.

It was hard to believe that the mysterious "black-eh" was a variant of the familiar Italian standard known as "pasta fazool" in America.  But I checked with the source.  My mother.

"So Mom, that soup.  It was made with Roman beans.  And roux?"

"Of course.  Everything had a roux!"

"And did it also have square-shaped pasta ?  I've been reading about these Slovenian noodles called bleki. "

"Yes. That's right.  Only we pronounced it 'bleck-eh.' "

Pašta fižol with bleki.

Mystery solved.

On to figuring out  Slovenian Dinner, Week 12.