I recently read an article about cooking like Italian peasants that included a recipe for cannellini beans with garlic and sage that works as a meal one night, and leftovers can be used to make quite a few different dishes for nights two or three. I love leftovers!
And then, tragedy struck: The grocery store I was at didn't have dried cannellini beans. They did, however, have dried great northern beans, which are smaller. And then I decided that I had an extra 30 minutes on my hands, so why-not-pack-some-beans-for-lunch-and-skip-to-making-leftover-recipes? Bastardization of recipes coming up!
The beans: Step one!
What you need:
One pound of dried great northern beans
Seven cups of cold water
What you do:
Empty your beans into a bigass bowl
Pour cold water over beans in bigass bowl
Let them sit overnight. Or do this in the morning and let them soak while you're at work all day.
The beans: Step two!
What you need:
Eight cups of room-temperature water
One large head of garlic, unpeeled, 1/2 inch trimmed off at the top to expose cloves
One big sprig of fresh sage
One tablespoon olive oil
One teaspoon whole black peppercorns
The aforementioned beans, drained
What you do:
Put everything in a big pot over medium-high heat
When it starts to boil, reduce heat to medium-low
If your water level starts getting low, add more. Make sure the beans are covered with water.
Simmer for about an hour, total. I took mine off the heat after about 50 minutes because they started getting pretty soft. If you're using cannellini beans, you'll need to simmer about 90 minutes.
Let them cool in the water for about 30 minutes
Drain water into the same bigass bowl you used to soak the beans in and reserve the cooking liquid
This is where peasant dish 1 ends. Feel free to stop here and eat the beans with some crusty bread, drizzled with olive oil. They're pretty damn delicious. I can't wait for lunch tomorrow.
The beans with sausages in a tomato-spinach sauce: Step one!
What you need:
Four cloves of garlic
One large sprig of sage
Four Italian chicken sausages
Three cups of cooked white northern beans from dish #1
One can of no-salt added whole tomatoes, with juice
One cup of cooking liquid from dish #1
Two tablespoons olive oil
Three handfuls of spinach
Salt and pepper, to taste
What you do:
Heat the olive oil in a big skillet
Smash the garlic
Cut up the whole tomatoes
Cook garlic until golden brown (~2 minutes)
The beans with sausages in a tomato-spinach sauce: Step two!
What you do:
Add the sausages to the skillet. Cook five minutes.
Add everything except the spinach. Put a lid on the skillet and cook 20 minutes, or until the sausages are cooked through.
The sausages look funny.
Let it wilt and you're done. Serve with that good ol' crusty bread. I picked up a loaf of Scholar's Inn bakehouse bread from Marsh and heated it up for about 10 minutes. Mmm-Mmm.
It's delicious.
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