Sunday bakes - 'Piece of home' - Pasta fagioli

Anyone who knows me, knows my Dad's family is Italian. And anyone who knows Italian families knows that they come with recipes. One of the best loved and most used recipes in my family is Pasta Fagioli, a peasant dish made with both beans and pasta. There are as many variations of this are there are people that cook it, even within my family we all make it a little differently, but it always has to have pasta and beans to make it Pasta Fagioli. This is my recipe.

Ingredients
A joint of smoked gammon
2 sticks of celery
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
5 chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1 tin of butter beans
1.5 cups of pasta (fusilli usually)
1 carrot - chopped into quarter slices
1 tinned of chopped tomatoes
Half a pack of cherry tomatoes - sliced in half
Fresh basil
Half a red bell pepper
dried oregano

Method
Put the gammon in a large pot, half full with water, cover and boil for roughly an hour and a half, depending on the size of the joint. 
Remove the gammon and store the stock water. 
Add a little oil to the bottom of a big pan and heat. Add the chopped onion, celery and carrots. Stir a little then add the garlic. Once the onion is translucent add the stock, the beans, the cherry tomatoes, the pepper, the herbs and the pasta. 
Heat for about 20 minutes, adding water if the levels get too low. 
Chop up the gammon into cubes, as much as you would like to add. It's likely you'll have some left over. 
Add the gammon and the tinned tomatoes and heat for another 5 minutes, add a small amount of fresh basil before serving. 

This dish is salty, smoky and satisfying, a really rich stew that tastes like home and family.