We've never eaten pasta e fagioli in Italy. We've never even seen it on a menu there, though a reliable source (Michele Sciocolone) tells us it is Neapolitan. (That's why we posted the Neapolitan chef and food vendor miniatures above. They're masked for Carnavale and sold on the same street as Christmas creche figures.) The dish—‶pasta fazool″ in the Neapolitan dialect—has an Italian-flavored familiarity that marks it as real comfort food. Turns out that it's known mainly in Italian-American cuisine. It's from that branch of cooking born when immigrants made do with canned and dried commodities rather than the fresh ingredients they knew in the old country. We're all immigrants now to the world of social distancing and staying indoors. We're making do with canned...Read More