Last month on my trip to Puglia, Italy I encountered various dishes that combined the following ingredients: pasta, garbanzo beans, local olive oil, and broth. Some appeared to be braised and served in just a few splashes of concentrated broth, others were bonafide ladle-worthy soups.

There was one that really stuck out. Imagine garbanzo beans bobbing about in a rich chicken broth with thick ribbons of pasta noodles weaving in between them, droplets of olive oil suspended on...