Pasta with celery and basil sauce with broad beans

This dish of pasta with celery and basil sauce, served here with broad beans, is an amalgam of a fondly remembered dish from childhood via what happens when you start nosing around in the British Library. Highfalutin bibliographic japes aside, it's also easy to cook.

Pasta fit for the infirm

This dish of pasta with celery and basil sauce with broad beans is a bit of a curiosity. For one thing, it does not appear in my father's meticulous journals of recipes picked up around the world during his travels. This is a little unexpected because it is a dish I remember vividly from childhood, something he delighted in cooking for me—and later taught me to cook—because he was bemused that he had a kid who was a glutton for broad beans, a trait he apparently exhibited as a child and for which he was teased by his younger twin brothers.

Much as I remember loving it as a boy and the times watching him cook it, I didn't really pay that much attention to the recipe. Because, way back then, our kitchen conversations, our private time when no one else was around, my mother vehemently disapproving of my father's night owl cooking tendencies rather than eating supper at "a sensible hour", would inevitably go off on tangents. Anything from Greek mythology to the nature or ball lightning on ships might be on the menu for conversation, recipe details not so much, even as they played out...

So, I was rather surprised to not find it in his handwritten journals that eventually came to me for safekeeping. Piecing together what I could remember about it—celery and basil were obviously core ingredients, and that he'd first come across it in Venice, etc.— I dug a little deeper. The Internet is not "deeper", it's merely "more of the mediocre median", and I soon became bored with even trying.

Then, totally incidentally, a while back, when researching some stuff to do with the social history of risotto in the British Library, I came across a recipe by a certain Signora Zambon published in one of the popular women's magazines funded by Mussolini's fascist party in the 1930s. Most of the women sending their recipes in to these magazines cannot be assumed to be fascists. Many viewed themselves simply as good mothers and household matriarchs, each eager for her 15 minutes of fame outside of the domestic rut.

History is a funny beast. While most would think it unreasonable if we today assume any "mother of three from Keighley" sending in her recipe for a foolproof Bakewell tart to a programme on a media outlet owned by an openly far-right tycoon as implicitly sharing the CEO's political ideology, lazy historians too often assume that women published in these fascist-controlled magazines aimed at Italian "housewives" were knowingly part of Mussolini's ideological apparatus. Like Winnie in Conrad's The Secret Agent, many simply thought such "things don't bear looking into".

In the case of Signora Zambon, it would be a mistake all too easily made. She, is most certainly arrogant, but I suspect that her hoity-toity airs have far more to do with a much older snobbery about the cultural superiority of Venice in particular, and the Veneto in general, than actually kowtowing to the fascisti behind the curtain of the editorial desk.

The most amusing part of her recipe is how she describes it as frugal, ideal for "invalids and the chronically unwell" ("invalidi e malati cronici")... though it contains both cream and rich cheese... albeit in restrained quantities for her era. And, she claims (not incorrectly, I suspect, given some of the much older Italian recipes I have published on here dug up in the British Library) that it dates back to 17th and 18th-century Venetian cooking, which was then considered amongst the finest in Europe.

This recipe—and, yes, it is delicious—is the hybrid resulting from trying to remember my father's original recipe, chancing upon la signora Zambon, and creating a Frankenstein's monster of my own through pottering about in the kitchen. Yet, like that monster, it can be briefly and spectacularly animated under the right circumstances.

Take the easy canal

Signora Zambon's recipe was arduous work. It involved first draining the sauce through sieve, pushing all the remaining solid vegetables through a hand-turned mincer, pulping the minced veggies using a pestle and mortar before returning them to the pot to simmer some more, and then taking a second run at the sieve to achieve a smooth, creamy texture. My version is easier: use a handheld blender or food processor.

In the case of the carrots, she writes of cutting them into ribbons ("nastri"). Without the aid of today's digital image wizardry, it's hard to tell exactly what she means. But, I don't think she means julienne. The term "julienne di verdure" had been widely used in Italian recipes for decades, lifted from French cuisine as it was in English. So, I usually cut them vertically using a handheld cheese slice or, when there hasn't been on to hand, a potato peeler.

On the pasta front, Signora Zambon uses bigoli, that wonderful pasta specific to the Veneto that is somewhere between spaghetti and bucatini in girth, but which is made with coarse wholewheat flour, semolina or buckwheat and often has a strong yellow colour as a result of using duck eggs. It's fantastic stuff. If you are lucky enough to be near a good delicatessen that sells it —in Venice, for example—I highly recommend it but I have never come across a dried version, which makes me suspect it either doesn't dry that well or is simply too niche to be profitably produced on an industrial scale.

So, I'm doing it here with my preferred alternative, namely pappardelle. However, it's great with any thicker "ribbon" pasta; bucatini, tagliatelle, linguine etc.

Obviously if you wish, you can pair the dish with any number of salads. However, this is one that I often have without any side dish because it is rather filling. I feel no guilt—it's brimming with veggie, chlorophyl and fibre goodness.

This version is for 2 to 3 diners (scaled down from the original meant for eight in Signora Zambon's orderly household), but you can do the math if you want to cater for a larger group. It scales in a a fairly prosaic way; no hidden tricks etc.

3 top tips to get this recipe right:

• With this dish, it's really important that in the very first stage the onions are softened slowly on a low-medium heat and that you don't skimp on the wine. This is one of those dishes where you very much want the onions not to caramelise or else, though delicious in a different way, the freshness of the basil and the celery are overridden

• This dish uses fresh bay leaves and is all about the freshness of flavours trapped within a creamy richness. If you only have dried bay leaves available, add only half the quantity because dried versions have a stronger flavour

• Broad beans are a vegetable that taste great raw or cooked and absolutely rubbish if undercooked. So, regardless of whether you are using fresh or frozen, whether you steam, boil or microwave them before adding to the sauce in the final stages, make sure they are almost fully cooked before adding them into the sauce. If you don't, the sauce may thicken too much or the pasta become soggy before they are optimally cooked

Shopping list

for pasta with celery and basil sauce with broad beans

• Approx. 80 to 90g (dried) pappardelle per diner; or equivalent in other "ribbon" pasta

• 2 large brown onions (or red); diced

• 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (not grated or crushed)

• 4 or 5 large stems of celery; chopped

• 2 large carrots; peeled and sliced vertically into "ribbons"

• 2 cups broad beans; fresh or frozen; pre-steamed/cooked

• 3 tbspns virgin olive oil

• 500ml dry white wine

• 500ml chicken stock (or vegetable stock)

• The juice and pulp of 1 fresh lemon

• 75ml single cream

• Approx. 3tbspns Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, finely grated

• 3 fresh bay leaves

• 2 tspns of freshly ground black pepper

• A generous clutch of fresh basil; leaves plucked from the stems

• salt to taste

Cooking Method

the pasta with celery and basil sauce with broad beans

1. In a reasonably deep pot with a lid, heat the olive oil on a medium heat. Add the onions and sauté, stirring regularly. When the onions show signs of softening, add the garlic and freshly ground black pepper and stir in. Before the garlic burns, pour in about 100ml of the wine and cook it off

2. Add another 300ml of the wine, stirring in. Cover and reduced to a low-medium heat simmering for approx. 10mins, until the onions are notably softened. Keep an eye on the pot to ensure the liquid does not cook off: you want to avoid the onions caramelising. If the liquid cooks off too quickly, add dashes of stock

3. When the onions are fully softened, add the remaining wine, the celery, lemon and bay leaves, and stir in. Re-cover and simmer for a further 5 or 6mins, stirring occasionally

4. Add the carrots and re-cover, simmering for a further 2mins. Then, increase to a medium-high heat, pouring in all of the stock. Bring this to a vigorous simmer and simmer for 10 mins, stirring occasionally

5. Reduce to a low-medium heat, adding the basil leaves. Re-cover and gently simmer for approx. 30mins, stirring occasionally

6. When all the vegetables are cooked until a fork passes through them easily (and the liquid should have reduced by about a third), add the cream and the cheese and stir in. Re-cover and simmer gently for another 10mins or so

7. Uncover and, using a handheld blender, blend the ingredients in the pot until smooth. This should have the consistency somewhere between a thick soup and a sauce. At this point, taste your sauce and add additional salt as needed. Re-cover and simmer very gently for another 15 to 20mins (on a very low heat if needed)

8. While your sauce further reduces, cook your pasta. While it's cooking, pour all of your reduced sauce into a large, deep frying pan (I often use a wok) and keep it simmering gently. Add the almost cooked broad beans and stir in, allowing them to cook fully

9. As soon as your pasta is ready, add approx. 3tbspns of water from the pasta pot to the sauce. Drain the pasta and add to the pan with the sauce. Gently fold the pasta into the sauce, ensuring it clings to all surfaces of the pasta

10. Plate and take to table with additional Parmigiano Reggiano to sprinkle on top, and any side dishes you may want

Alternatives

Apart from the chicken stock, this is basically a lactovegetarian dish and is readily converted to one by simply using vegetable stock instead. It's a lot less simple to make it vegan: as I've stated on numerous occasions, I don't have the knowledge of what plant-based substitutes for cream or parmesan cheese may or may not work well and I have never tried them.

As far as carnivore versions go, sure, I have cooked this sauce with pancetta and bacon and, yes, it was very tasty, but that smokiness rather killed the fresh flavours in this dish that are it's signature feature.

Conversely, slivers of smoked salmon in a pescatarian version of this dish added only in the last stages have worked wonderfully, perhaps because there is something about smoked salmon that almost demands to be paired with fresh flavours.

Pairings

I'm not entirely sure Signora Zambon would approve of the consumption of alcohol with this dish. I can see her, like a thwarted matriarch character in a Pirandello play (inevitably played by Isabella Rossellini in some high-profile revival by a hip director) reminding us that it is for "invalids and the chronically ill".

Nonetheless, it works with wine. And, this is one of those dishes where I tend to be led as much by the season as the dish itself. I quite naturally tend towards white wines in the warmer months for a dish brimming with fresh green flavour, but I really like it with red wine in the autumn because I find broad beans, with their unique flavour due to specific amino acids and a high content of mineral metals—you can veritably taste the iron in there—can hold their own against a suitable red.

There are many white wines with which this works, but a particular favourite of mine is J. Hofstätter Chardonnay Alto Adige, which effectively comes from "just up the hill" from where this dish originates. Another comes from just across the Adriatic, Krizno Sauvignon Blanc Ribolla Gialla, from the Goriška Brda region of Slovenia, near to the Italian border and with long historic connections to Venice. It's one of those wines that pop up occasionally, but are not always readily available and, in my opinion, seriously underrated.

Because this isn't a particularly "fancy" dish, I generally don't remember specific red wines with which I've had it, though my instinct is to go for lighter, softer reds such as Schiava, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo or Barberas. But, one I specifically do remember was G.D. Vajra

Dolcetto d'Alba. I was surprised because it's not a grape variety with which I am that familiar. It was surprisingly soft and smooth, something that doesn't smother a dish without meat ingredients (well, apart from the chicken stock). But it seems I may have lucked out, apparently 2022 and 2023 were particularly good years and those are the bottles with which I ended up...