Recipes for Tuscan white beans turn up everywhere and nearly always include the claim that Tuscans eat a lot of beans and that Tuscany is a center for bean cooking. Strangely however – for a place that's renowned for its beans – the recipe described below is practically the only one I ever see about Tuscan bean cooking.

If you know a good source for Tuscan bean recipes, please share it with me (3D@3Dsoundblog.com). Thanks.

And now having gotten that out of my system, my daughter and I agree that the Tuscan white beans described below are very good. Tonight I served them with pork chops (pork loin rib chops at $2.99 per pound, on sale) and snow peas.

Ingredients
2 cup homemade white beans
½ red onion ($1.99 per bag of five onions), coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic ($0.69 per head), crushed
1 plum tomato ($0.48), coarsely chopped
2 tablespoon fresh basil ($2.79 per package), chopped
several tablespoon fresh Italian parsley ($1.49 per bunch), chopped
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 or 3 shakes of organic black pepper ($2.99 per 1.8 ounce)
pinch dried red chile flakes
feta cheese (domestic cow's milk feta at $6.99 per pound)

Procedure
Preheat the oven to 200°F.

Gently fry the red chile flakes in warm olive oil in a skillet over low heat. When the chile flakes darken, add the onion and sauté over medium heat until the onion sweats. Add the garlic, tomato and black pepper. Sauté for a couple of minutes. Add the lemon juice, immediately followed by the beans, basil and parsley. Cook until the beans are heated through.

Keep the beans warm in the oven while you prepare the rest of the meal.

To serve, sprinkle with feta cheese.


UPDATE, Saturday, April 26, 2008: The latest issue of La Cucina Italiana magazine proves my point. An article about coastal Tuscany includes idiosyncratic recipes for mushroom soup, pot roast (in broth with mushrooms and kale), and porterhouse steak... along with the seemingly inevitable "slow cooked cannellini beans" ("add sage" – the recipe advises – 'when you cook the beans for an hour and 20 minutes')... I've got to wonder if bean cooking in Tuscany isn't more copy than practice. (Avana Mathis [May/June 2008], Maremma: A place where bucolic countryside crashes into the azure waters of the Mediterranean – this hidden, rugged and sophisticated area of central Italy is Tuscany's great secret, La Cucina Italiana, pages 48-57)