Maltagliati con i fagioli: Romagna pasta and beans

Maltagliati con i fagioli is the recipe Romagna made the day after the big sfoglia, the sheet of egg pasta. Once the tagliatelle and the cappelletti were finished, the offcuts stayed on the board, those crooked strips no azdora, the woman who ran the farmhouse kitchen, would ever have thrown away. They were cut into diamonds, left to dry in a tea towel and ended up in the bean pot, which had been ticking over for an hour.

It is no waste cooking in its most honest form: flour and eggs already paid for, pulses that cost little, a sprig of rosemary from the garden. And yet when it reaches the table, thick and steaming, nobody thinks about leftovers.

A shape born from what was left over

The name says it all: maltagliati, badly cut. There is no correct measurement, only irregular diamonds of two or three centimetres, with edges that can be straight or crooked depending on where the knife went. That irregularity is precisely their merit: the thinner pieces dissolve into the soup and bind it, while the thicker ones stay al dente and give you something to chew.

If you have no offcuts put by, make a sheet on purpose with two eggs, following the quantities in the guide to pasta dough basics. And when you roll the sfoglia for tagliatelle al ragù, keep the trimmings in a bag in the freezer: within a few weeks you will have the maltagliati for a whole pot.

Soupy or thick

Romagna pasta and beans, what the old people called pasta e fasùl, is thick. It is not a broth carried on a full spoon: it is a soup that sits still in the bowl, with the blended beans acting as a cream and the pasta soaking up whatever is left. You let it rest for five minutes before serving, just long enough to settle, and you eat it almost with a fork.

There is also a soupier version, thinner, that some people prefer in summer or for children. You get it simply with more of the cooking liquid and no final rest. It is not wrong, but it is not the one we make at home: for us the real test is a spoon that stands upright.

The difference between the two lies in the moment you drop the maltagliati in. In the thick version the pasta cooks inside the soup and releases starch, which binds it; in the soupy one people tend to cook it separately, and the result is cleaner but less creamy.

Pork rind, lardo and the right fat

The pork rind is optional, but it gives the soup a roundness no oil can imitate: scrape it well, blanch it and cook it with the beans from the start, then cut it into strips. Lardo, the cured pork back fat, chopped into the soffritto does the same job on another level. Leave both out and you get a lighter, entirely plant based version that is still very good: an extra tablespoon of oil and a generous hand with the rosemary are enough.

How it is served

In deep bowls, with a drizzle of raw oil, black pepper ground at the last moment and, for those who want it, a dusting of Parmesan. Bread is not needed: the pasta is already there. And if any is left over, the next day you can almost cut it into slices and warm it through in a pan with a ladle of water. Many people find it better still that way.