Made with Classic Tomato and Garlic

Pasta e Ceci Salad

Serves 6

Pasta e Ceci Salad
Shop the sauce

While not officially any sort of textbook version of pasta e ceci, the backbone here is still both pasta and chickpeas (ceci). The trick of letting the canned garbanzos swim in the pasta water for a brief time pays dividends, reviving them from their canned self, plumping them slightly and, most importantly, making their surface more receptive to flavor—important once the sauce comes into the picture. Olives and parsley are great here, but in the spirit of this sort of fridge-clean-out, do-less-with-more, accidentally fabulous recipe, I kept them optional.

Ingredients

  • 8 ounces pasta, a short shape like bowties
  • Kosher salt
  • 1 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • 1–1 1/2 cups Roman’s Classic Tomato & Garlic sauce
  • ½ small red onion, very thinly sliced
  • 1 garlic clove, finely grated
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons sherry, red or white wine vinegar, plus more
  • ½–1 cup green (Castelvetrano or Gordal) olives, pitted and crushed (optional)
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more
  • ½ cup coarsely chopped parsley (optional)

Preparation

  1. Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente, 8–10 minutes or so. About halfway through, add the chickpeas, letting them boil alongside the pasta (they won’t overcook or anything, just let them do their thing).
  2. Meanwhile, combine onion and garlic in a small bowl and season with salt and pepper. Add vinegar and toss to combine and let it sit a few minutes while the pasta cooks.
  3. Once pasta is cooked to your liking, drain the contents of the pot and transfer to a large bowl. Add sauce and toss, toss, toss to coat. Let cool to room temperature. (Alternatively, spoon some into a bowl now and top with parmesan and eat it– pop the rest in the fridge for later.)
  4. When you’re ready, add the onion mixture to the cooled pasta, along with olives (if using) and olive oil and toss, toss, toss some more, adding more olive oil if you feel it needs it. Add parsley (if using) and pack into your finest reusable container.

Do ahead:This can be made three days ahead, stored wrapped and refrigerated.

More recipes with Classic Tomato and Garlic sauce

Baked Shells

Baked Shells

Less intensely indulgent than classic Baked Ziti and a lot less fussy than lasagna, in my old age this is sort of the only baked pasta I’m making these days. It’s got all the hits: pasta, cheese, sauce, but feels casual in a way that makes it seem possible to throw together for dinner to feed 6–8 of your closest friends tonight, if you wanted (especially when the sauce is made). So easy, you can kind of just close your eyes and put some things (boiled pasta, red sauce, cheese) in a baking dish, bake it, and love your life.
Tomato Pasta with Eggplant and Sausage (on the side)

Tomato Pasta with Eggplant and Sausage (on the side)

Decidedly a tomato pasta with eggplant and not an eggplant pasta– so much so that the eggplant could easily be replaced with any vegetable– say, peppers, fennel or zucchini. The moral of the story is you can sauté any vegetable in sausage fat, add tomato sauce or puree and have a very good, saucy tomato pasta that’s more than the sum of its parts. With a little sausage on the side, it feels more like a “full dinner” and less like a “bowl of food”.