This dish is a standard at our house. I make it with white beans, red beans or chickpeas (but never with black beans or lentils, which – trust me – don't work).

The trick to preparing this dish is to keep the individual flavors separate by fostering different amounts of cooking time for the different ingredients, even though they're all in the same skillet – and to not prepare a dish of uniform texture and flavor.

Ingredients
3 mild Italian pork sausages (approximately ¾ pound, $5.99 per pound from Whole Foods)
1 red onion ($1.99 per bag of five onions), coarsely chopped
3 garlic cloves ($0.69 per head), crushed
1 green bell pepper ($1.00), cut lengthwise into 1" x ¼" strips
2 cup homemade white beans
1 14½-ounce can diced peeled tomatoes in juice ($0.61), undrained
2 teaspoon dried oregano
3 tablespoon fresh basil ($2.79 per package), chopped
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon fennel seed
2 shakes organic black pepper ($2.99 per 1.8 ounces)
chicken stock, as needed
12 ounce rotini spiral-shaped pasta (= half the bag; 24-ounce bag at $3.59, on sale)

Procedure
Remove the casings from the sausage. Break each sausage into six pieces.

Gently fry the fennel seeds in warm olive oil in a skillet over low heat. When the seeds darken, add the onion and sauté over medium heat until very soft.

Mound the onion into the center of the skillet. Place the sausage around the perimeter, and cook until browned. Preserve as much as possible the mound of onion.

Mix the garlic and black pepper into the onion. Spread the bell pepper and oregano over the top of everything, and don't mix. Cover the skillet, and cook for a couple of minutes.

Layer the beans onto the center of the mixture. Then layer the tomatoes around the perimeter. Very gently mix the basil into the surface of the beans and tomatoes. If additional liquid is needed, add chicken broth.

Cover the skillet, and simmer for 20-30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook rotini in a large pot of boiling water until al dente. Drain well.

Serve the sausage and beans over the rotini. Most recipes for this dish suggest serving it with Parmesan cheese sprinkled over the top, but I don't think the cheese is needed... Proceed according to your own taste.