Beans “all’uccelletto”

Author: @Guendolyn79 Serves: 4 Time: 1 night rest + 2h 15′

Difficulty: easy

Ingredients:

• 300 gr dry beans (essicated)
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 cup tomato sauce (half of the bottle you see in the photo)
• 1 little onion
• 2 bay leaves
• 750 ml of vegetable stock
• olive oil
• salt and chili pepper (optional)

Procedure

Leave the dry beans covered in cold water for 1 night.

Then throw away that water and put them in a pot with chopped onion, garlic and vegetable stock, with high flame. When it boils, slow down the flame and cover with the lid of the pot.

After 45′ add the tomato sauce, and after 15′ add the bay leaves. Add the olive oil (4-5 spoons).

Keep on stirring every 10′.

After 2 hours remove the lid and check the salt. Add the chili powder if you like it. Cook till the sauce is thick.

Bon Appetit

Story of the recipe

This is a really ancient and traditional italian dish. The name itself “beans at the bird” makes no sense even in italian and we have lost it’s original meaning. Maybe it was eaten with a little stew bird aside, we don’t know.

This is so traditional that it’s one of those recipes you must follow carefully otherwise the italian god of food will see you. And judge you.

My husband was so scared that I would try to change something about our recipe that it hangs on my fridge written in ancient italian with medioeval doodle all around it with the title “The beans at the bird saga“. He sometimes checks if I use the regular wooden spoon to stir it.

He is so passionate about this recipe also beacuse it reminds him of a very special time. When he was in his twenties, with his friends they had a competition during Christmas time, a tough one: who can eat more beans!(cooked with this recipe by the previous winner, obviously)

The rules were stricts and the mesurements merciless: a special wooden spoon was passed to the winner, and with that they mesured the quantities.

It’s almost legend that time when my husband almost won.

He ate 7 plates and 4 spoons, but his friend Mauro managed to eat 7 plates and 5 spoons.

It hurts till these days.