Pasta e fagioli, pasta with beans (typically cannellini beans), is a popular Italian peasant dish.

Some Americans call it bean and macaroni soup, but “pasta fazool” seems to have captured the public’s imagination:

 
How about some pasta fazool for National Soup Month (January)? An easy recipe follows for Pasta e Fagioli from Patsy’s restaurant in New York City.
 
> The history of pasta.

> The different types of pasta: a photo glossary.

> A year of pasta holidays.

[3] Cannellini beans, also known as white kidney beans, are also a popular side in Italian cuisine. Check out the different types of beans (photo © Check Your Food).

[4] The basic Italian pasta sauce: marinara, made with tomatoes, onions, and herbs. The name means “sailor’s sauce) (photo © DeLallo).

Ingredients For 6 Servings

 
Preparation

1. HEAT the olive oil in a deep skillet and sauté the onions until lightly browned.

2. ADD the stock, beans and marinara sauce; bring to a boil. Add the cooked pasta.

3. REDUCE the heat and simmer for 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
 
 
TYPES OF SOUP PASTA

Italians have long made very small cuts of pasta called soup pasta, or pastini (“little pasta”). Pasta in brodo—soup in broth—is a popular dish. Types of soup pasta include, among others:

 
Each region of Italy made its own shapes before the days of mass communication. Thus, there are very similar shapes with different names (for example, orzo, risi and seme di melone).

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Botanists might call it Pachyrhizus erosus, but we know it as jícama (HEEK-uh-muh) or alternatively, the Mexican yam or Mexican turnip, although, as it is so often in popular nomenclature, jicama is not related botanically to either the yam or the turnip (except that are tree all root vegetables).

The flowering vine is native to Mexico; it is the tuberous root of the plant that is eaten.

You’ll find it most often in Latin American cuisine, although Spanish traders brought it to the Philippines, from which it was brought to China and other parts of Southeast Asia. It‘s now an ingredient in popular dishes of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
 
 
WHAT’S IT LIKE?

Jícama is white and crunchy, not unlike a water chestnut. The flavor is mild, sweet, and starchy—like some apples that aren’t sweet enough. Some people liken the flavor to raw green beans.

Jicama: tuberous roots. Photo by Eric | Wikimedia.

The jícama at most grocery stores is coated with a thick wax, for extended shelf life. The yellow, papery skin is first peeled with a paring knife, revealing flesh that looks like a potato. It can then be diced into cubes or sliced into matchsticks or batons.

Uncut jícama can be stored at room temperature for a week or so, or refrigerated a bit longer. Once cut, it should be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated, where it will last for another week.

Once you’ve peeled a jícama, what do you do with it?

 
Why not try some jícama fries tonight? Here’s a recipe for baked jicama fries.

Save a few slices for your salad!

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If you enjoy grapefruit, consider the Melogold. This hybrid of a pummelo and a white grapefruit is hefty and exotic looking: bigger than large grapefruit, with yellowish green pebbly skin and pale yellow flesh.

Like pummelos (one of the ancestors of modern grapefruit), Melogolds have a thicker rind than regular grapefruit. The flavor is sweet-tart, and the fruit is so low in acid that you don’t need much (if any) sugar. The fruits are almost seedless and are extremely juicy.

And they’re available for just a few months: January through March.

So send yourself—or someone else who likes healthful low-calorie treats—a gift of it from Melissas.com.

Enjoy it as you would any grapefruit: on its own, in a fruit salad or in any grapefruit recipe.

The Melogold, a recent grapefruit hybrid. Photo courtesy Melissas.com.

America is the world’s largest consumer of grapefruit, with large commercial groves in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas. But the grapefruit’s ancestor, the pummelo (also pomelo, pommelo, pumello, pummello, pumelo and shaddock), comes from far away: It’s native to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Pummelo seeds were brought from the East Indies to the West Indies in 1693 by an English ship commander, one Captain Shaddock. He left the seeds in Barbados, where they were cultivated.

The grapefruit may have been a horticultural accident (a natural hybridization of the pollen from an orange tree) or a deliberate hybridization between the pummelo and the orange. We’ll never know which path the new fruit traveled, but it appeared around 1700. The original grapefruit was small, about the size of an orange.

It was originally called both “forbidden fruit” and the “smaller shaddock,” after Captain Shaddock.

By the end of the 18th century, grapefruit had spread to other Caribbean islands and Jamaica became the center for grapefruit cultivation (today, there is no commercial-scale production left in Barbados).

THE GRAPEFRUIT COMES TO AMERICA

It took more than 125 years—until 1823—for the grapefruit to cross the Caribbean. It arrived in Florida but was not immediately popular; people did not like peeling the thick skin. But the trees thrived, and the fruit’s name evolved based on how it grows: in grapelike clusters.

In 1870, the large, golden clusters on a tree he passed attracted John A. MacDonald, who lived in Orange County, Florida. MacDonald established the first grapefruit nursery. Florida’s first shipment of grapefruits to New York and Philadelphia, in 1885, generated interest and helped create the commercial grapefruit industry. Florida remains the grapefruit center of the world.

By the late 1800s, grapefruit trees were being cultivated in southern Texas; by 1910 they had succeeded in Arizona and California. The pink grapefruit and other varieties were developed. In 1929 a Texas citrus grower discovered a mutated red grapefruit growing on a pink grapefruit tree, which became the Ruby Red cultivar.

THE UGLY COUSIN

In Jamaica, the grapefruit was crossbred with the tangerine to produce the ugli, which is indeed ugly but a sweeter fruit that the locals prefer.

The grapefruit got its American name from
Floridians who noticed that the fruit grew in
clusters like grapes (ginormous grapes).
Photo courtesy U.C. Davis.

The U.S. leads the world in grapefruit production, followed by China, Mexico, South Africa, India, Israel, Argentina, Turkey, Cuba and Brazil. (Source: FAO Faostat, 2008 figures)

Florida itself was the biggest exporter of grapefruit in the world until the late 1960s, when other countries began to invest in cultivation. Florida produces 75% of U.S. grapefruits, Texas 14% and California 10%, with the final 1% divided among other southern states.
 
HOW TO BUY & STORE GRAPEFRUIT