Pasta and chickpeas

This recipe from Lazio comes from Italian-style cooking: the recipes of the Italian traditional cooking.

The end result is tasty but the amount of pasta was too much. We ended up with pasta for 3 persons but sauce for 2. I rectified the amount of pasta below.

It doesn't take long to do and it's filling. Perfect for a weekday dinner!

Serves: 2 persons.

Ingredients:

• 100g small pasta (I used chifferi rigati)
• 100g dry chickpeas
• 5 cloves of garlic: 3 peeled and whole and 2 peeled and sliced
• 2 ripe tomatoes
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 1 tin 50g anchovies (30g after drained), cut into pieces
• olive oil to taste
• salt & pepper to taste

Method:

1. Soak the chickpeas overnight and pressure cook them with 3 whole garlic cloves, the rosemary sprig and salt & pepper to taste. Usually you need 100g of dried chickpeas to get 200g cooked chickpeas.
   
   
   
2. Drain the chickpeas but reserve the water. The book asks for discarding the garlic cloves and rosemary sprig. The cloves were so soft they were easily minced so I added them to the sauce. I removed the sprig but left the leaves.
   
   
   
3. Place the tomatoes in boiling water for a few minutes. Peel them, remove the seeds and mince them. The tomatoes were very soft so I easily minced them by hand.
   
   
   
4. In a frying pan, lightly brown the other 2 sliced garlic cloves, the minced tomatoes and the anchovies fillets in olive oil. As the anchovies I bought were tinned in olive oil, I used the oil in the tin for extra flavour.
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Add the chickpeas to the sauce.
   
   
   
6. Cook the pasta al dente. I used the water from the cooking of the chickpeas to enhance the rosemary and chickpea flavour of the dish.
   
   
   
7. Add the pasta to the sauce and more pepper. Mix. Add some of the pasta cooking water if needed.