Pasta, Beans, and Tomatoes

While visiting Opa in Hamburg, Germany, we tried out a new recipe.

To start we got a pot of salted water going for some pasta. In addition we got 2 shallots, a handful of sage, a couple of handfuls tomatoes, 3 cloves of garlic, and the juice of 1 lemon.

Which we all chopped up.

Then we tossed 1 pound of pasta into the boiling water.

Next we sauteed the onion, garlic, and

the sage.

After a few minutes Lucy and Opa added the tomatoes and 1 can of white beans.

After everything was warm and tasty we pressed the lemon juice, drained the pasta and tossed it all together.

A little salt and pepper. Voila! Oh, we shredded Parmesan cheese to serve. Yummy. And please - do notice the heart-shaped pasta!

Beans and Mashers

This turned out to be quite a lovely dish for a warm spring day in the Carolinas. We got two pots of water going and prepared a whole bunch of potatoes to boil in one of them; for mashed potatoes. Basically we cooked taters and mashed them up. (Here, though is the more extensive how-to-do including cream, butter, salt , and nutmeg).

Then we concentrated on the beans. We washed about 600g of green beans, cut the ends off and halved them.

Then we boiled them in the hot water for just about three minutes before we drained them.

Then we cut up 8 strips of bacon and fried them up all nice and crunchy.

In the meantime we drained 1 can of cannellini beans and diced up half a big onion and a handful of parsley,

We added a pat of butter to the bacon and

the onion and let it all melt for another three minutes.

Then we added the beans to warm them up and added a bit of salt and pepper.

That was it. Nice and easy. All this goodness was finally served with the parsley. It all in all took just 30 minutes.

Fennel Sausage, Fennel Soup, Saucy Fennel Fun

And this is how our second readers' recipe got mangled up in our kitchen of mischievous mayhem. The end result, however, was without doubt absolutely sensational. This recipe was sent over the big pond by the girls' German aunt, "Sister Tilla".

We plucked a small handful of sage leaves off their stems and

tossed them into 2 liter of boiling vegetable broth together with 2 cans of white cannellini beans. We let them simmer for half an hour. (Here is where we deviated the most substantially. Since Sister Tilla used dried bean soaked over night and cooked for an entire hour.)

In the meantime we chopped up 2 bulbs of fennel, half a big yellow onion, 6 cloves of garlic, a small handful of sun dried tomatoes (the kind without oil), and another small handful of sage leaves.

After about 15 minutes of boiling beans, we started to gently saute the veggies in olive oil, also for 15 minutes and then chucked them into the broth. After these first 30 minutes of cooking a five minute rhythm emerged.
We added the veggies and waited 5 minutes.

We added 6 sliced mild Italian sausages and waited 5  minutes.

We added a quarter pound of torchiette pasta (aren't they gorgeous) and waited 5 minutes.

Then we cut up some parsley and .... ate.

Thank you Tilla. It was really yuumylicious!

(We should share here the anecdote of  Sister Tilla tracking across Hamburg to her favorite Italian grocer Andronaco Grande Mercato for the sole purpose of procuring a "fennel sausage". Which took her maybe 45 minutes one way using public transportation. Since we weren't allowed such culinary and traveling luxury, we jumped out of the car, passing an Earth Fare store, offering a wonderful butcher counter. There we were told that all their basic Italian sausages were made with fennel.)