Fried Sagne Pasta with Chickpeas

Prepare dried chickpeas

1. Soak the dried chickpeas overnight. Fill the pot so the water covers the chickpeas. After 12 hours, rinse the soaked chickpeas. Refill the pot with water and a pinch of salt and cook until they are just firm (al dente) about 60-90 minutes. You may need to remove the foam that comes to the surface with a slotted spoon. Drain the cooked chickpeas but save a cup of the cooking water.

Make the sagne pasta

1. Mound the flour on a wooden pastry board, make a well in the centre and add a pinch of salt. Then pour in the water a little at a time while mixing it together with the flour. The dough should hold together but not be sticky. You may not need all the water. Once you have the right consistency, knead vigorously for about 10-15 minutes. At first, it will look crumbly, but as you knead, the dough will change its texture, transforming into a smooth, firm ball.
2. If you want to speed things up, mix the dough ingredients in a stand mixer until it looks like wet sand, then tip onto a floured pastry board, bring together with your hands and knead for 2-3 minutes. This is what I did.
3. Wrap the dough in clingfilm (plastic wrap) and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
4. Cut off one third of the dough. Keep the rest wrapped to stop it from drying out. Flatten the piece of dough with the palm of your hand, then pass it through the pasta machine’s widest setting three or four times, folding the dough into three each time. I didn’t use the other settings but if you want thinner dough you can then pass it through a thinner setting.
5. If you don’t have a pasta machine, you can use a rolling pin to roll the dough out on a floured pastry board. I did this for half my dough and preferred the result.
6. Cut the rolled out dough sheet into two pieces, place one on top of the other and cut the sagne according to the width you require. In general , sagne pasta pieces are about 6/7 mm wide (about 0.30in) and ⅚ cm long (2-3in). Place the cut pieces on a floured tray to prevent them sticking together. Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Finish your fried sagne pasta with chickpeas

1. Put the olive oil and pancetta cubes into a deep frying pan or skillet and cook over a moderate heat until the pancetta starts to change colour. Add the unpeeled garlic cloves and peperoncino and continue cooking for a couple of minutes until the garlic starts to soften.
2. Add half a glass of white wine. Allow the alcohol to evaporate and then add the boiled chickpeas, rosemary, dry sweet red pepper or sun-dried tomatoes cut into pieces and some salt to taste. Add a cup of hot water or a cup of broth (beef, vegetable or chicken) and some of the saved chickpea cooking water. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Set aside ⅓ of the sagne and either add the rest of the uncooked sagne to the broth and cook there (you may need to add more broth). Or parboil it in salted water for a couple of minutes and then add to the broth to finish cooking. I did the latter but some recipes say cook the pasta in the broth. In total, fresh sagne need about 5-7 minutes. But it depends on the thickness. So, test taste before serving.
4. In the meantime, fry the rest of the sagne in hot olive oil with an unpeeled garlic clove and some rosemary until the sagne are golden brown. The pasta browns quickly so be careful not to burn it. I used a couple of the garlic cloves from the sauce.
5. Remove any remaining garlic cloves from the dish and serve with the fried sagne. Only add the fried pasta a minute before serving, otherwise it loses its crispiness.