Tuscan Recipes

Cooking, cookery, typical Tuscan cooking : Beans in the flask ( Fagioli al Fiasco).

Tuscan people are very well known as “beans eater” and a few recipes are so truly Tuscan but also left aside for “technical reason”.
Peasants used a green flask ,Chianti bottle- the kind with the bulbous base. They took off the straw all round, then they poured beans in the flask, with olive oil, and spices and let it cook in the fireplace overnight. The bottle was closed by a piece of material and some straw. In the morning beans were ready and savory.
With the disappearing of old Chianti bottles and even more of the use of fireplaces, this recipe was almost forgotten. Then somebody, maybe a chemist had the great idea of using glass bottles very similar, if not the same, to chemical laboratory flask .

So here we are with the incredibly simple recipe:
Soak 200 gr. beans overnight in water with a pinch of salt. The most typical beans are the white cannellini but any other kind of beans will result tasty.
Place the beans in a glass ’fiasco’ and add 2 spoons olive oil, 5 sage leaves , 2 cloves of garlic . a quarter of onion and 1 small rosemary branch.Season with salt, fill the recipient three-quarters full with water. Place them on the stove. When the water starts boiling, low the temperature down. Let them cook for an hour.
Serve the beans, adding a little salt (if necessary) and some freshly-ground pepper and oil.

Or on top of Crostini con Cavolo Nero
Wash the cavolo nero (black cabbage)carefully and remove the large stems. Cut the leaves in strips. Finely chop onion and sauté it with oil in a casserole. Add the cavolo nero with some tablespoons of hot broth . Simmer for about 20 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper
Toast the slices of bread and then put on cavolo nero.
Serve immediatly.