Pasta with chickpeas.
Olive oil to coat.
Couple of turns of the pan.
When you have an even layer over medium high heat
and it shimmers then you're ready to add your vegetables
or in this case for John pancetta.
So I let the pancetta render.
Again, that is not a necessary thing.
You can make this totally vegetarian
and now we're going to add in our rosemary, our fennel
or if you don't have it, fennel seed or fennel pollen
and our onions.
I'm getting some natural salt of course
out of the salted pork that's in the pan
'cause John wanted it with pancetta
so I'm just putting one little sprinkle of salt.
I use red pepper flakes.
About a teaspoon.
To make things sweat, I'm gonna put a lid on it
and get the juices flowing a little more quickly for us.
Okay, I ground up half of my one can of chickpeas.
Now we're going to add our chickpeas, our tomatoes
and our liquid.
All you really need to make this recipe is water.
Per every cup of pasta, you need three cups.
So three to one water to pasta.
I'm going to use about a quart of liquid
and about a cup and a half of pasta, okay?
So I am choosing, again, this is a matter of choice,
vegetable or chicken stock to add extra flavor to the dish
but you can make it with just water.
That's fine.
So I used half a quart or about two cups of stock
or in this case bone broth
and I'm gonna add an equal amount of water roughly, okay?
So now we have about one quart of water
in this five quart pan
and now I'm turning the heat up to high
to bring it to a boil, okay,
and we're going to add to this our chickpeas
and our half a can of crushed.
So now we need to add our tomatoes.
These are canned cherry tomatoes.
You need about a cup and a half to two cups
of tomato product of any kind, crushed, diced, whole.
I love these little cherry tomatoes.
I'm gonna throw those in.
So what we want now
is for this to come to a full rolling boil
then we're gonna drop it down to a simmer.
So bring to boil, lower to simmer
and then we're going to add in about a half a bag
of any fun little kooky shaped pasta.
This is some square shaped tiny pasta.
So now we're adding in our pasta, kinda half
and now we're lowering the heat to simmer.
Eight, 10 minutes will be good.
Well, this has never happened
in 15 years of making the same television show.
Forgot my garlic.
Phew.
The pasta is just right.
So now we're going to wilt in our greens.
In this case, escarole.
And now we're gonna put in a good fat handful or pecorino.
Now, we're going to add our fennel fronds.
That looks frondtastic.
Frondtastic.
That's my punny buddy.
And then just to be ridiculous,
bigger pieces of cheese on top.
Make it snow.
Woohoo.
Big flakes.
Like Christmastime in the springtime.
Can you see in there?
Yeah.
Looks like lots of cheese.
And there you go.
You serve it right from the pot, guys.
(applause)