Italian · Basilicata

Pasta e Fagioli con Cotiche alla Lucana

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.

ServesFour portions

Sourced0of 12 in BC

Cook

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300 g

dried borlotti beans

soaked overnight in cold water

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

400 g

pork rind (cotiche)

blanched, scraped and excess fat removed

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

For the soffritto

30 g

lard

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

1 medium

onion

finely chopped

Your own market

2 stalks

celery

finely chopped

Your own market

1 medium

carrot

finely chopped

Your own market

200 g

tubetti or ditali

dry short pasta

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

30 ml

extra-virgin olive oil

raw, for finishing

Your own market

2 g

black pepper

coarsely ground, added aggressively at the end

Your own market

Optional Lucana variation

2 cloves

garlic

for rolling inside the cotiche

Your own market

10 g

flat-leaf parsley

for rolling inside the cotiche

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1 small

peperoncino

dried, for rolling inside the cotiche

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

The Method

Drain the soaked borlotti beans and set aside. Blanch the cotiche in a large pot of unsalted boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain, scrape the inner fat surface thoroughly with a knife until no rubbery fat pockets remain, and discard the blanching water. The scraped surface should feel clean and slightly tacky, with no loose fat.

Lay the scraped cotiche flat on a work surface. Optionally, scatter garlic, parsley and peperoncino across the inner face. Roll each piece tight and tie at intervals with kitchen twine. The rolls should hold their shape under gentle pressure without unravelling.

In a wide, heavy pot, melt the lard over a medium flame. Add the onion, celery and carrot and render slowly until the vegetables have softened completely and the lard has absorbed their moisture — the soffritto should be pale gold and fragrant, not browned.

Add the drained borlotti beans and the tied cotiche rolls to the pot. Cover with cold water to a depth of about 4 cm above the solids — no more, as the broth must finish thick and starchy, not watery. Bring to a gentle simmer. This is where the dish lives or dies: maintain a steady, quiet simmer for two full hours, never a rolling boil, until the cotiche have surrendered their collagen into the liquid, the beans are completely tender and the broth has thickened visibly from the released gelatin and bean starch. Do not salt during this stage.

Lift out the cotiche rolls, untie and slice into rounds; return them to the pot. If desired, remove a cupful of whole beans, mash them coarsely and stir the paste back into the broth to deepen the creaminess. The broth should coat a spoon.

Bring the broth back to an active simmer and add the tubetti or ditali directly to the pot. Cook for the final ten minutes, stirring frequently to prevent the pasta from catching on the base, until the pasta is just tender and has absorbed much of the surrounding liquid. The soup should be dense and cohesive, not pourable.

Remove from the heat. Taste and season with salt only now, bearing in mind the salinity contributed by the cotiche and lard throughout the braise. Finish with a generous pour of raw extra-virgin olive oil and an aggressive amount of coarsely ground black pepper — no cheese is added. Serve immediately at piping heat; the pasta will stiffen and the broth tighten irreversibly if the soup is rested.

III

Quality Hierarchy

Reserve — Heritage-breed pork rind from a pasture-raised animal, with thick, naturally gelatinous skin; borlotti beans from a named Lucanian producer, dried from the current harvest. Lard rendered in-house from fatback.

Estate — Well-sourced cotiche from a local butcher who can confirm breed and feed; borlotti beans dried and bagged by a reputable Italian importer. Good artisan lard.

Market — Standard pork rind from a reliable butcher, any provenance; dried borlotti beans from a supermarket with clear pack date — avoid old stock. Commercial lard of decent quality.

House — The dish still functions with any fresh pork rind available, provided the blanching and scraping step is not skipped. Dried beans must be used; canned beans produce inferior body and flavour and should not be substituted.

Sensory Tests

◇Touch. The scraped cotiche surface feels clean and slightly tacky — no loose or slippery fat remains before rolling.

◇Smell. The soffritto smells of sweet rendered fat and softened alliums — no raw onion sharpness, no browning.

◇Sight. After two hours the broth visibly coats the ladle and the bean skins have opened fully; a spoon drawn across the surface leaves a momentary channel.

◇Sight. After the pasta stage the soup is dense and cohesive — it moves slowly in the pot and does not pour freely from the ladle.

◇Where it lives or dies. The two-hour collagen braise at a steady quiet simmer — never a rolling boil, never rushed — is the line this dish cannot cross: without it the broth remains thin and the cotiche stay rubbery, and no finishing technique will recover either.

V · Cross-Cuisine Parallels

Brazilian feijão com carne seca: dried beans braised with cured or preserved pork whose collagen and salt enrich the cooking liquid in precisely the same manner. French (Gascon) cassoulet broth technique: pork rinds slow-braised to build a gelatinous, self-thickening cooking medium that carries and binds the legumes. Spanish (Asturian) fabada Asturiana base: white beans slow-cooked with fatty pork cuts in a self-enriching broth finished with a raw pour of olive oil.

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What to Pour

The pairing

Bisol Cartizze Dry

Bisol · Prosecco DOC / DOCG

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

Sparkling wine

From British Columbia

Fort Berens Riesling

Fort Berens Estate Winery · Lillooet

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

Wine

Without alcohol

GT's Synergy Organic Kombucha — Gingerade

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

Non-alcoholic

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The whole pairing

VII · Origin & Lineage

Basilicata (Lucania), southern Italy. Recorded in La Cucina Lucana: Tradizioni e Sapori della Basilicata. The dish belongs to the cucina povera tradition of the Mezzogiorno, in which every part of the pig — here the rind, ordinarily discarded — was transformed by long, patient cooking into a vehicle of extraordinary richness. The use of lard rather than olive oil for the soffritto, and the absence of cheese at the finish, are markers specific to the Lucana kitchen, distinguishing this preparation from superficially similar pasta e fagioli of Campania or Lazio.

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