#12 Pasta alla Cozze e Ceci
This story is part of College Meals Gone Wild, a collection of cheap, easy, and realistic meals that I made for myself out of my small, ovenless kitchen to sustain my body and mind while I survive and thrive through college.
A lesser writer would have waxed poetic about having found themselves busy and tired at the end of a day with nothing in the fridge and having, in desperation, put together this fast and simple pasta using only pantry staples. That, however, is not me. I went to the store and bought a chunk of parmigiano-reggiano, a bunch of parsley, and a tin of mussels to make this dish. I was planning on it and I was accordingly excited about it.
Pasta alla cozze e ceci: pasta with mussels and chickpeas. I first met this dish on a rainy day in Florence. After having been to Il Clarinetto — a small restaurant a stone’s throw away from the hostel I was staying at — for dinner a couple of times, I decided to take my final lunch in Florence at the ole’ Clarinet. As I have been thoroughly impressed by their affordable yet surprisingly generous dinner specialties from elegant servings of pasta for two with hunks of burrata and a mountain of truffle, giant steamy calzones with fresh tomatoes and briny anchovies, or the tower of fried crabs, squid, and langoustines lightly dressed in tomato sauce, I decided to put my faith in their simple lunch menu. For about 6€, I got a big bowl of tiny Anellini pasta with chickpeas and a generous helping of mussels in a creamy emulsified olive oil and parm sauce. It looked really simple but it was delicious. Suddenly I felt as if both the tyrannical “don’t mix carbs” rule and the “don’t mix main proteins” rule were instantly abolished in my budding heart. It didn’t even occur to me to mix pasta with chickpeas as a source of carbs and protein at the same time. I spooned up the tiny rings of pasta and chickpeas with my spoon and used my other hand to pick out the plump mussels from their shells. What a pleasant discovery. When I see menù del giorno in most tourist centers of Italy, it’s usually hurriedly made pasta alla pomodoro for the tourists to have their mung but this plate of detail-oriented pasta sized just big enough to wedge a chickpea in its hole in an expertly emulsified sauce bringing out unimaginable depths of flavor from a simple handful of ingredients was full of personality and love. That’s the key point I glean from this simple recipe: personality and love. It’s simple, it’s hearty, it’s nutritious and delicious.
I have to say though, I was thoroughly disappointed with the quality of canned mussels in Australia. I bought the expensive kind packed in olive oil and all I seemed to have gotten were sad, tiny, shriveled-up, and overcooked balls of sub-par mussels. I’m pretty sure they were imported from Spain too which is odd since I have so many great memories of the downright fantastic canned seafood they have in Spain worthy of a bar snack in itself with just a bit of crusty bread to dip in the oil. I guess it makes sense that Spain would keep the good stuff for themselves and ship out the garbage to the other side of the Earth. Next time I’ll just get fresh mussels and use some extra olive oil.
