As a public service, Jimmy Kimmel’s Pasta Tina — video and recipe

You may or may not have been fortunate enough to catch the video of Jimmy Kimmel preparing a pasta/bean dish for his children. It suddenly appeared on my screen (who knows how I got there) and I was intrigued. First, it used an immersible blender INSIDE THE CAN of beans. Second, because he blended the beans to smoothness, I wouldn’t be annoyed by the usual texture of beans. Third, I was unfamiliar with chicken or vegetable base as a substitute for boullion. Simple but includes garlic. What more could I ask for?

So now I ‘m back to the original Jimmy Kimmel dish. The video is here:

My friends know that I wound up on a journey thru cookbooks, online, and elsewhere for slight variations on the recipe because it took three weeks for Fresh Direct to have the required cannellini beans in stock (thank you COVID-19). By the time they arrived, I’d complicated what I’d originally planned to make. Altho the dish was excellent, it was no longer simple (even if I did use up a lot of ingredients in their last few days of life). Because the recipe was assembled quickly, I had to set out the ten ingredients in advance so there wouldn’t be a pause to measure, slice, mince, or whatever. A total diversion.

Because this is a thrown-together recipe of the type we all have, the editors must have gone a little nuts trying to pin down the details for publications. Hence the variations available. This one seems the most complete version extracted from this article:

https://www.popsugar.com/food/jimmy-kimmel-pasta-tina-recipe-47395961

Jimmy Kimmel’s “Pasta Tina”

Jimmy Kimmel Live

Ingredients

1. Salt
   Olive oil
   1 box small-size pasta
   1 can cannellini beans (or dried cannellini beans if you have the patience to soak them overnight)
   3 cloves garlic (squashed)
   Spoonful of Minor’s Chicken (or Vegetable) Base
   Good parmesan cheese [ground at time of serving]

Directions

1. Boil a pot of water with a little salt.
2. Add the pasta to the boiling water for about eight minutes.
3. While the pasta is cooking, begin your sauce by blending the cannellini beans.
4. Take three cloves of garlic, squash them, remove from the skin, and place them in a pot over medium-low heat with a little olive oil. If you want to get fancy, you can tilt the pot and place the garlic in the olive oil to infuse the flavor and really get the garlic lightly golden. If the garlic browns, throw it away and start over.
5. Stir the pasta and make sure it isn’t sticking to the bottom.
6. Once the garlic is golden, remove it from the pot (optional), add the blended cannellini beans, and add a spoonful of the Minor’s chicken (or vegetable) base.
7. Stir everything together.
8. When the pasta is ready, drain it in a colander, put the pasta back into the large pot, and add the cannellini bean sauce.
9. Mix it all up.
10. Serve with good parmesan cheese.