Grandma Menna’s Kitchen: beans ‘all’uccelletto’

ottobre 14, 2009

Here we are with our second recipe dedicated to leftover beans. After a light and rapid bean soup, it’s time to try a strong and flavorful dish that you can use either as a side dish and as a second course to all intents and purposes. Maybe you won’t wait for leftover beans but you will cook beans just to make this dish, once tried. Have you ever heard of beans uccelletto style?

The name is due to Pellegrino Artusi, who named those beans after the kind of cooking they require, since they need the same ingredients (sage leaves, garlic and olive oil) as little game birds (uccelletto in Italian). We add sausages to make them really tasty, as they were always at disposal in farmers houses.

Ingredients:

Beans
Extra virgin olive oil
Sage leaves
Pork sausages
Tomato sauce
Garlic
Salt and Pepper

As you can easily see, these are the same ingredients we used last week to make bean soup but the sausages. As last week, I won’t give you quantities, it all depends on how many leftover boiled beans you have.

Heat in a large saucepan a few tablespoons of olive oil with a clove of garlic (don’t peel it) and some leaves of sage. When the garlic has flavored the olive oil and sage leaves are crispy, remove the garlic and pour in beans with some spoonfuls of their cooking water, add a few tablespoons of tomato sauce to redden beans. Season with salt and pepper.

Bring to a simmer and let cook for half an hour or so, then add sausages without the external skin and keep on cooking until sausages are completely cooked through.

Serve hot with some toasted slices of Tuscan bread to dip into the sauce and eat sausages!