Sagne e fagioli

Sagne are a homemade pasta of flour and water, rolled by hand and cut into short strips or diamonds. In the province of Pescara they are cooked above all with beans, in a light tomato sauce.

It is the Pescara version of L’Aquila’s sagne e ceci: a creamy one-dish meal, eaten hot with a drizzle of raw oil and a pinch of chilli.

For the sagne

• 300 g plain flour (or half semolina)
• About 150 ml lukewarm water
• A pinch of salt

For the beans

• 300 g dried beans (borlotti or cannellini)
• 80 g guanciale or pork rind
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 celery stick, 1 bay leaf
• 300 g tomato passata
• Extra virgin olive oil, salt, chilli

1. The evening before, soak the beans.
2. Drain and cook them in fresh water with the bay leaf and celery for about an hour and a half until tender; salt at the end and keep the broth.
3. Knead flour, water and salt, rest for 30 minutes, roll out the sheet and cut it into short strips or diamonds.
4. In a pan brown the guanciale with oil, garlic and chilli; add the passata and cook for 15 minutes.
5. Add the beans with some of their broth, mashing a few, and bring to the boil.
6. Cook the sagne directly in the pan for 4–5 minutes, adding broth if needed. Serve with a drizzle of raw oil.

• Mashing some of the beans makes the dish creamier.
• If you use pork rind, blanch it first and cook it with the beans.
• The sagne can be made a few hours ahead, well floured.

We do not have photos of this dish yet: the image is an illustration made for this page.

Pasta and beans is one of the most widespread dishes of Italian peasant cooking. In Abruzzo it takes the form of sagne, the egg-free pasta of poor homes, and changes pulse from area to area: chickpeas in L’Aquila, beans in Pescara, grass peas in the Baronia.

Inland from Pescara, around Penne, Loreto Aprutino and the Pescara valley, it was the everyday lunch in the cold months.