Pasta e Fagioli con Cotiche alla Lucana

Basilicata, southern Italy

A hearty Basilicata bean-and-pasta soup built on pork rind (cotiche) slow-braised until gelatinous, creating a broth of extraordinary body. Dried borlotti beans are soaked overnight, then cooked with soffritto of lard-rendered onion, celery and carrot. The cotiche are blanched, scraped, rolled tight and tied, then added to the bean pot to braise for two hours until they surrender their collagen into the liquid. Short pasta — tubetti or ditali — is cooked directly in the broth for the final ten minutes, absorbing the bean-and-pork essence. Finished with raw olive oil and aggressive black pepper; no cheese.

The cotiche dissolve into the broth making it unctuous and porky; borlotti beans provide earthy sweetness; black pepper is the dominant seasoning note.