Italian Molise Pasta and Beans | Taccozze e Fagioli
Taccozze are rough diamonds of semolina pasta, cut with a knife from a sheet rolled by hand, and they exist because a household with no machine still wanted something wide enough to carry beans. Nothing about the shape is regular. The edges differ in length, the thickness varies across the sheet, and that irregularity is why each piece holds a different amount of the liquid it cooks in.
The beans matter more than the pasta. Dried white beans are soaked, then simmered slowly with garlic, bay and nothing acidic until the skins slip and the water turns cloudy. That cloudy water is the sauce. It is never thrown away, never replaced with stock and never thickened with flour or cream, because the starch that leaves the beans during a long gentle cook is all the body the dish needs.
The result sits between a soup and a dressed pasta and is eaten with a spoon. In Molise it belongs to the cold months, costs almost nothing, and its only fat is a piece of pork skin and a thread of raw olive oil poured over the bowl at the table.
Yield: 4 servings. Soaking: 12 hours. Prep: 45 minutes. Cook: 2 hours. Total: about 15 hours with the soak. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo piatto. Region: Molise, the Fortore and Trigno uplands.
The Story
This is Samnite country and the food still shows it. Long before Rome pushed east across the Apennines the Samnite confederation held these hills, and their sanctuary at Pietrabbondante, a theatre and two temples cut into a mountainside at 3,300 feet, still stands. The archaeology turns up storage jars of pulses over and over: broad beans, chickpeas, lentils and vetch, because legumes grow where wheat struggles and keep for a year in a dry room. Building a winter meal around a pot of pulses was fixed here before these valleys spoke Latin.
Beans of the New World arrived in the sixteenth century and slotted into that pattern. Molise still grows them on small upland plots, and Riccia, in the hills south east of Campobasso, is known for a thin skinned white bean that cooks soft without bursting. The village bean fairs every autumn are agricultural events, not tourist ones, and a family once put up enough sacks in September to last until June.
The pasta half comes from the same economy. Semolina and water, rolled on a wooden board and cut with whatever blade was in the drawer, needed no eggs and no equipment. Names shift village by village: taccozze across much of Molise, taccozzelle where the pieces are smaller, sagne further into Abruzzo. The constant is the shape, wide and flat, and its purpose, to be lifted in a spoonful of broth rather than twirled on a fork.
Ingredients
For the taccozze
Durum wheat semola rimacinata, 2 cups (300 g)
All purpose flour, 1/3 cup (50 g)
Warm water, about 2/3 cup (160 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g)
Extra semola for the board, about 3 tbsp (30 g)
For the beans
Dried white beans, cannellini or a local variety, 1 1/2 cups (300 g)
Cold water for soaking, 6 cups (1.4 litres)
Cold water for cooking, 8 cups (1.9 litres)
Garlic cloves, whole and unpeeled, 2
Bay leaf, 1
Sage sprig, 1
For the base
Extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp (45 ml)
Pork skin, cotica, cleaned and cut in strips, 3 oz (85 g), optional
Garlic cloves, thinly sliced, 3
Rosemary sprig, 1
Dried diavolillo chilli, crumbled, 1 small
Canned peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand, 2/3 cup (160 g)
Fine sea salt, 1 1/2 tsp (9 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For finishing
Extra virgin olive oil, raw, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Grated pecorino, 1/3 cup (30 g), optional
Flat leaf parsley, chopped, 1 tbsp
Preparation
Soaking the beans overnight
Pick the beans over for grit, rinse them and cover them with 6 cups (1.4 litres) of cold water. Leave them 12 hours at cool room temperature, or refrigerated if the kitchen is warm. They roughly double in weight and should feel evenly heavy, with no hard wrinkled ones left. Drain and discard the soaking water, which carries the indigestible sugars that give beans their reputation.
Cooking the beans and building the broth
Put the drained beans in a heavy pot with 8 cups (1.9 litres) of fresh cold water, the unpeeled garlic, bay leaf and sage. Bring them slowly to a bare simmer over 20 minutes and hold there 1 1/2 hours, skimming the grey foam early. Add no salt and no tomato yet: both firm the skins and can leave a bean chalky after two hours.
Judging when the beans are ready
They are done when a bean crushes to a smooth paste between two fingers with no grain in the middle and the water has gone visibly cloudy. That cloudiness is leached starch and it is the entire sauce, so keep every drop. Lift out the garlic and the herbs and set the pot aside off the heat, the beans still under their liquid.
Mixing and kneading the pasta dough
Mound the semola and the flour on a board, dissolve the salt in the warm water and work it in with your fingers, then knead 8 to 10 minutes. The little soft flour is not traditional everywhere but it makes the sheet easier to roll by hand. Stop when the dough is firm, even and smooth, then wrap it and rest it 30 minutes so the gluten relaxes and the sheet stops fighting the pin.
Rolling and cutting the taccozze
Roll the dough on a dusted board to about 1/16 inch (2 mm), turning it a quarter turn between passes so it stays even. Cut the sheet into strips about 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) wide, then cut across them on the diagonal into diamonds. Do not aim for perfect ones. Spread them on a dusted tray in one layer and turn them once while you cook the base.
Starting the base and the pork skin
Using cotica, scrape it clean, blanch it 10 minutes, then cut it into strips the width of a finger. Warm the olive oil in a wide pot over low heat with the sliced garlic, rosemary and chilli, add the pork skin and infuse about 8 minutes. The garlic must stay pale: browned garlic turns bitter and that bitterness runs through every spoonful.
Bringing the two halves together
Lift out the rosemary, stir in the crushed tomatoes and cook 5 minutes until the raw note has gone, then pour in the beans with all their liquid. Take out one ladle of beans, crush them with a fork and stir them back in: that is what turns a thin broth into something that coats the pasta. Add the salt, taste and simmer 15 minutes.
Cooking the pasta in the beans
Raise the pot to a lively simmer and drop the taccozze straight in, stirring at once so they do not settle and stick. They need 4 to 6 minutes, and they release their starch into the broth instead of into water that gets poured away, which is why this gives a thicker result than cooking them separately. Pull the pot off the heat while the pasta is still firm and let it stand 3 minutes.
Plating
Serve in wide shallow bowls warmed to about 140°F (60°C), with a spoon rather than a fork. This is not a plated dish and should never be built into a tower. Ladle so beans, pasta and broth arrive in roughly equal proportion, stirring the pot before each bowl, since the solids sink within seconds.
Pour a thread of raw olive oil over each bowl at the table and grind black pepper on top. The oil is not a garnish. Poured cold onto a hot surface it releases its peppery aroma at once, and it is the only fresh flavour in a dish where everything else cooked for two hours.
Pecorino is optional and regional opinion is divided. Pass it separately rather than stirring it in, because the cheese tightens the broth as it melts and a bowl that was loose in the kitchen arrives at the table stiff. A little chopped parsley goes on last for colour, and nothing else.
Professional Technique
The technique that decides this dish is holding salt and acid back until the beans are soft. Bean cell walls soften as the pectin between them breaks down in hot water, and both salt and acid slow that breakdown by stabilising the pectin. Tomato added at the start is the usual culprit and can leave beans chalky after three hours. Cook them in plain water with aromatics, salt them once they crush easily, and bring the tomato in at the end.
The second technique is deliberate starch harvesting. Bean starch leaches into the water continuously during a slow simmer, while a hard boil breaks the skins and clouds the broth with fragments rather than dissolved starch. A bare simmer for 90 minutes gives a broth thick and clean at once. Crushing one ladle of beans and returning them adds a coarser second layer of body without a blender, which would make the pot uniform and dull.
The third is cooking the pasta in the bean liquid rather than in salted water. Fresh semola pasta sheds a great deal of starch in its first minutes, and doing that inside the pot thickens the broth exactly as the taccozze soften. The pasta also seasons itself from the broth, so the salt must be correct before it goes in. Judge it then, because afterwards you cannot dilute without losing the body you just built.
Texture and Moisture Control
Three textures have to coexist: beans soft to the point of collapse, pasta with a firm centre, and a broth thick enough to coat a spoon without setting. Beans reach that point at 90 minutes and go to mush at 120, so they come off the heat before the pasta goes near the pot. The taccozze then get 4 to 6 minutes in liquid already at temperature, short enough that the beans do not disintegrate around them.
The broth keeps thickening off the heat and again in the bowl, and that is what most cooks misjudge. Take the pot off the stove while the liquid still looks slightly too loose, because the pasta goes on absorbing and the starch sets as it cools. A dish that looked perfect in the pot is stodgy at the table.
Keep a mug of hot water beside the pot for corrections, never cold water, which shocks the starch and makes the broth grainy. Too thick, loosen it a tablespoon at a time off the heat. Too thin, crush another ladle of beans into it rather than reducing, since more heat overcooks the pasta and the beans you spent ninety minutes getting right.
Professional Mise en Place
The beans and the pasta stay independent until the last six minutes, and both are better prepared ahead. Plan the soak the night before and everything else follows.
Equipment and tools
Heavy pot of at least 5 quarts (4.7 litres) with a lid
Wide pot for the base, deep enough for the beans and their liquid
Rolling pin, wooden board, bench scraper, sharp knife
Flat trays dusted with semola, clean cloths
Ladle, skimmer, wide shallow bowls
Prepared ahead
Beans soaked overnight, up to 18 hours in the refrigerator
Beans cooked and cooled in their own liquid, up to 2 days ahead
Pork skin blanched and cut, up to 1 day ahead and kept cold
Taccozze cut and dusted, up to 3 hours ahead on a tray, or fully dried
Service setup
Bean pot at a bare simmer, hot water at hand for loosening
One ladle of beans set aside ready to crush and return
Taccozze loose on the tray and not stuck together
Bowls warming, raw olive oil, pepper mill and pecorino on the table
Chef Tips
Check how old your dried beans are. Beans that sat in a warehouse for two years never soften properly however long you simmer, and no technique rescues them. Buy where there is turnover, look for a harvest year on the packet, and if a test batch is still chalky after two hours the beans are the problem, not the pot.
Do not add bicarbonate of soda to speed the cooking. It works, raising the pH and dissolving pectin faster, but it strips flavour, gives the beans a soapy edge and destroys thiamine. Time and a gentle simmer do the same job without the damage.
The pork skin is worth finding. Cotica gives the broth gelatin, a body that starch alone cannot supply, and it is the difference between a bean soup and one that feels rich with no added fat. Ask a butcher for it fresh, blanch it, and leave it in the finished dish cut small.
Without the pork skin the dish is vegetarian and loses little. Compensate with a parmesan rind dropped into the beans for the last 30 minutes, or a second crushed ladle of beans, and finish with a more generous pour of good olive oil.
Common Mistakes
Salting the beans at the start. Salt stabilises the pectin in the cell walls and slows softening, so beans salted early stay chalky long past the point where they should be creamy. Season only once one crushes easily between two fingers.
Adding tomato to the cooking water. Acid does the same as salt, only more strongly, and tomato is the commonest way it reaches a bean pot too early. Cook the beans in plain water and bring tomato in with the base.
Boiling the beans hard. A rolling boil tears the skins off and leaves a broth full of fragments rather than dissolved starch, cloudy to look at and thin in the mouth. Keep the surface barely moving for the whole 90 minutes.
Cooking the pasta separately and draining it. That water carries the starch that should be thickening the broth, and drained taccozze sit in the bowl seasoned with nothing. Cook them in the bean pot and accept the tighter timing.
Taking the pot off the heat too late. The broth keeps thickening off the stove and the pasta keeps absorbing for minutes. Stop while it still looks slightly loose, or serve something closer to a stew.
Wine Pairing
Tintilia del Molise DOC Rosso: The native red of these hills in its plain form, without the weight of a Riserva, and the bottle a Molisano opens on a weeknight. Medium body, dark berry fruit and a wild herb edge sit comfortably beside beans and rosemary, and the tannin is light enough not to clash with a broth. Serve it at about 61°F (16°C).
Pentro di Isernia DOC Rosso: A small denomination from the upland province of Isernia, almost never seen outside the region, built on Montepulciano with a share of Sangiovese. Leaner and more savoury than the coastal reds of Molise, with a dusty earthy finish that suits pork skin and garlic. Worth ordering if a list carries it.
Biferno DOC Bianco: The white face of the Biferno valley, mostly Trebbiano with Bombino and Malvasia. Soft citrus and a faintly saline finish, and its job is refreshment rather than contrast: the dish is thick and starchy, and a cool simple glass resets the palate between spoonfuls. Drink it within two years of the harvest.
Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo DOC: The deeply coloured dry rose of the neighbouring region, from Montepulciano, and far more substantial than it looks. Red fruit to meet the tomato, acidity to cut the gelatin from the cotica, and still light enough for a primo. Serve it properly cold, near 54°F (12°C).
Falanghina del Sannio DOC: From the Campanian hills just over the border, also Samnite territory. Brisk green apple and a faintly bitter almond finish work against the softness of the beans, giving the palate an edge the dish itself lacks. The most refreshing choice here and the easiest to find.
Storage & Reheating
Cooked beans in their liquid keep refrigerated in an airtight container for 4 days and freeze for 3 months, and storing them this way beats storing the finished dish. Never drain them: the liquid protects the skins and it is the sauce you will need. Cut taccozze dry completely on a tray over 24 hours and keep in a paper bag for 2 weeks, or freeze on the tray and bag them.
The assembled dish keeps 2 days refrigerated and thickens to almost solid, which is normal. Reheat in a saucepan over low heat with 1/4 cup (60 ml) of hot water per portion, stirring gently, until it loosens and steams through, about 6 minutes. Correct the salt afterwards, since the pasta absorbed some of it.
Do not freeze the finished dish. The pasta turns soft and grainy on thawing and the broth separates into water and sediment that will not recombine. For a version made ahead, freeze the beans in their liquid, then cut fresh taccozze on the day and cook them in the thawed pot, about 20 minutes from cold.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 servings with the pork skin included:
Calories: 555 kcal
Total Fat: 15 g
Saturated Fat: 3 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 11 g
Cholesterol: 12 mg
Sodium: 810 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 84 g
Fiber: 15 g
Total Sugars: 4 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 23 g
Principal micronutrients: folate, iron, magnesium, potassium, manganese, phosphorus, thiamine
These figures are estimates. Leaving out the pork skin removes about 45 calories and most of the cholesterol per serving, and the fibre is high because beans and durum wheat both contribute.
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