Wandering around the grocery store yesterday my brain was going in 50 different directions. Tired, hungry, lazy, cold, preoccupied, would all describe my situation at the time. When I am feeling these things, my mind usually goes to soup, but I just had soup the day before and I sort of wanted to just be able to shovel something into my mouth and not have to deal with that pesky broth. My eye caught ditalini pasta and I thought of my favorite soup to make around this time of the year. I thought why don't I make a quick version of that, sans sauce! The soup I am talking about is here, but don't call it pasta fagioli or you may be brutally murdered (by comments). PS - sorry if your getting this OBNOXIOUS ad on the right with autoplay and music. I tried to disable it through my ad agency and it doesn't seem to be going away! Also somehow it seems to be claiming extra screen real estate? It is becoming sentient.
Tasty.
First I cooked the sausage in the pot, then I took it out and got rid of most of the liquid fat. Next cook onions and peppers in the rest of the sausage fat till they start to brown. Add garlic, followed by tomato paste. Add the sausage back in. Add like a 1/4 cup of water and scrape the bottom of the pan to get all the goodness off the pan and into the food. Add a can of diced tomato, 2 cans of beans (strained and rinsed), parm cheese, and the pasta!
Oh pish tosh, call it whatever you want. I like cooking the pasta in the soup so they suck up all the tomato & herb-y goodness.