Jess Shadbolt’s recipes for warming pasta soup and a sharp, salty-sweet salad

Winter warmers don’t always have to be hearty and heavy. This pasta e fagioli is robust enough to take the edge off a cold day, but it is also silky, delicate and elegant. Be patient with the soffritto, however: the lengthy cook helps build the soup’s flavour, and your patience will be more than rewarded. Persimmons, AKA kaki fruit, meanwhile, are one of the unheralded saviours of the winter kitchen, bringing both colour and a welcome, honeyed sweetness to just about everything they touch, especially when tossed with bitter winter leaves. We really don’t use them enough in cooking.

Pasta e fagioli (pictured top)

Don’t add the pasta until just before serving, and do bear in mind that it will continue to cook and expand as the bowls settle at the table.

Prep 20 min
Cook 1 hr 15 min
Serves 6

Olive oil
50g celery heart, finely chopped
60g carrot, finely chopped
80g red onion, peeled and finely chopped (net weight)
2 dried red chillies, crumbled
Salt and black pepper
3 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
4 sprigs fresh rosemary, needles picked and finely chopped
4 canned plum tomatoes, drained and kept whole
540g cooked cannellini beans, or other cooked white beans, plus their liquor
170g dried ditalini pasta
Grated parmesan, to finish

Warm about three tablespoons of olive oil in a large pot on a medium-low heat. Add the celery, carrot, onion, chilli and a pinch of salt, and cook, stirring often, for at least 30 minutes, until the soffritto is extremely soft and sweet; add more oil if it looks dry.

Add the garlic and rosemary to the sofrito pot – a well of oil should by now have pooled in the centre; if it hasn’t, just add extra oil to create one – then fry for a minute or so, until the garlic tans without browning. Stir in the tomatoes, smashing them up as you do so, and cook for about 10 minutes, until they tint everything red.

Drain the beans, reserving their liquor, and stir into the pot to coat. Turn up the heat to medium-high and add enough of the reserved bean liquor to cover the pot’s contents by about an inch (if you don’t have enough liquor, top up with water or stock). Bring to a simmer and cook for five minutes, until all the flavours meld.

Take off the heat and, using a slotted spoon, transfer a quarter of the beans to a food processor – don’t worry if some soffritto clings to them. Blitz completely smooth, then stir back into the pot. Return the soup to a gentle simmer and cook for another five or so minutes. Adjust for salt as needed and keep the soup at a bare simmer on a low heat.

Just before serving, bring a medium pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Add the ditalini and cook it only halfway (check the packet instructions for timings). Using a slotted spoon or spider, transfer the half-cooked pasta to the just-simmering soup, keeping the pot of pasta water to the side. Turn up the heat, bring the soup to an active boil, then finish cooking the pasta in the soup for three to five minutes, until it is al dente. If the soup looks a bit dense, add a ladle or two of the pasta water to loosen it – the mix should be creamy and stretchy, not thick or gloopy.

Take off the heat, season the soup with a generous dusting of grated parmesan, black pepper and a good drizzle of olive oil, and serve immediately.

Radicchio with persimmon, hazelnuts and gorgonzola

Prep 10 min
Cook 30 min
Serves 4-6

4 ripe persimmons
½ tsp thyme leaves, chopped
Salt and black pepper
Good olive oil
35g shelled hazelnuts
2 heads radicchio, and/or treviso, and ideally one of each
Juice of ½ lemon, or to taste
30g gorgonzola, crumbled

Heat the oven to 230C (210C fan)/450F/gas 8. Tear each persimmon into eight chunky wedges (or slice them, if you prefer), put them in a bowl with the thyme, a pinch of salt, some black pepper and a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and toss to coat. Spread out the persimmon wedges evenly over a baking sheet, then roast for 15-20 minutes, until softened and lightly caramelised. Take out of the oven and leave to cool.

Meanwhile, spread the hazelnuts over a small baking sheet and roast alongside the persimmons for about 10 minutes, until aromatic and richly golden brown. Remove, leave until cool enough to handle, then crush into chunky, uneven pieces, either with a mortar and pestle or a rolling pin. Leave the nuts to cool completely.

Remove and discard the tough outer leaves from the radicchio, then tear the remaining leaves into a large salad bowl; rip up any particularly large pieces to make them more manageable. If using treviso, cut off the top half, then, working from the cut end down, thinly slice the rest into 1¼cm-thick rounds.

Season the lettuce with a pinch of salt, a squeeze of lemon and one or two tablespoons of olive oil, then toss and taste, adding more salt, lemon juice and/or oil until the salad is glossy and tastes nicely sharp.

Add the hazelnuts, roast persimmon wedges and gorgonzola, toss again and season with more salt, if need be. Mound the salad generously on a platter and serve.

• Jess Shadbolt is chef/co-owner of King and Dean’s, both in New York. Her book, The King Cookbook, co-authored with Annie Shi and Clare de Boer, is published by Flatiron Books.