Italian White Beans, Tomatoes & Herbs

Italians have lots of easy but flavorful dishes with common ingredients like beans and tomatoes. Here you make you own tomato sauce for the beans... that's it! Get the best Roma tomatoes you can find, because they are key to this dish.

 

Ingredients (4 to 6 servings):

 

1 can (14.5 to 16 ounce) cannellini beans, drained

4 ripe Roma tomatoes, halved or quartered (any thick stem part cut out)

+ 2 Roma tomatoes, chopped

2 cloves garlic

4 basil leaves

1 tablespoon rosemary

4 sage leaves

1 red chili pepper, chopped (seeded, if you prefer)

1/4 teaspoon sugar (a little more if sauce if too tart) 

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano + more for serving

 

To a blender/food processor add 4 Roma tomatoes, garlic, basil leaves, rosemary, sage leaves, red chili pepper, sugar, salt and 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil. Blend until a smooth sauce. Heat the sauce over low heat for 2 minutes, then add the chopped tomato (this adds some chunky texture to the sauce), and cook until it cooks down to the desired thickness. Stir in the beans and when they have heated, mix in 1/4 cup grated Pecorino Romano. Serve with more Pecorino Romano on top and crusty bread on the side.

 

 

 

WORD HISTORY:

Grease-The ultimate origin of this word is unknown. "Grease" is related to "crass," a Latin-derived adjective borrowed by English via French. "Grease" goes back to the Latin adjective "crassus," which meant "fat, thick, dense, solid." This produced the noun "crassia," meaning "fat, animal fat in melted or less than solid form." "Crassia" seems to have later become "grassia" in Latin, as Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese all have forms spelled with a "g," although Old French may have first had "craisse," then "gresse," which became "grece" in the Anglo-Norman French spoken in England, and this was borrowed by English circa 1300, most commonly as "grese." The verb form developed from the noun in about 1400 and meant "to smear with fat (grease);" thus, "to lubricate." (Note: I'm not sure about the verb's pronunciation in the U.K., but in the U.S. both "greese," like Greece, the country, and "greez," rhymes with "cheese," are heard.)