Pasta with Cannellini Beans and Brown Tomatoes
Rich and light at the same time
first, I made beans the hard way. Overnight soak. Brought them to a boil in the dutch oven with a bay leaf, some black peppercorns, 2 juniper berries and some gray sea salt. Once boiling I put the lid on and moved the dutch oven to the actual oven (350 degrees). Started checking after 45 minutes.
They split. Oops!
That was day one.
Day Two: I started my water boiling for the pasta, then I heated olive oil up in a saucepan.
Added in a healthy pinch of red pepper flakes and 2 slightly crushed garlic cloves.
removed the cloves when they looked like this. Then I had to turn off the heat to attend to my tomatoes.
At this point, the water was boiling for the pasta. Cut some x's in the toms:
dropped em in the water for a few seconds:
and peeled them:
(now you can put the pasta in to cook)
gave the toms a quick zap with my hand blender, (but you could just do a quick crush with a fork or something (they're still pretty raw inside, tho)) and added them in to that oil - started reducing them on a very high simmer/low boil:
When the tomato sauce thickened up, I turned off the heat, added in the white beans and a few knobs of butter (=richness!)
and mixed it all in with the drained pasta: