Pizza Beans
A rich, stovetop-cooked thick tomato sauce with white beans is topped with two cheeses and then baked.
Servings 4
Ingredients
- olive oil
- 1/4 pound pork sausage (optional)
- 1 cup shallots, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped small
- 3 big cloves of garlic, minced
- 3 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 tablespoon anchovy paste
- 1/2 – 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
- 1 teaspoon dried tarragon
- 1 28-ounce crushed tomatoes
- up to 1 cup red wine or chicken stock or mushroom stock
- salt, pepper, sugar (optional)
- 4 – 5 ounces ounces fresh spinach, torn into small pieces (see Kitchen Notes)
- 2 15-ounce cans of low-sodium or salt-free white beans, drained and rinsed (see Kitchen Notes)
- 1/3 – 1/2 pound mozzarella, in big shreds (see Kitchen Notes)
- 1/2 cup or more freshly grated Parmesan
Instructions
- If you are using pork sausage or other meat, sauté it with a little olive oil until browned, in the same big heavy-bottomed deep skillet (or Dutch oven) you will use for the rest of this operation. Then set aside in a little bowl and wipe out the pan.
- Preheat the oven to 425ºF. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil to the pan, heat it to medium, then add the shallots and carrots and sauté about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute or so. Then add the tomato paste, anchovy paste and red pepper flakes (if you are using them), and stir and sauté everything another 2 minutes.
- Add the spinach and continue to sauté until it wilts, stirring frequently, probably another 90 seconds. Then add the crushed tomatoes and 1/3 cup of the wine or stock. Mix everything together and bring to a simmer. If you are using meat, return it to the pan now.
- Cook, occasionally stirring, for 10 – 12 minutes. You want the whole thing to reduce a bit and end up pretty thick, not liquidy—denser than the usual red sauce. Taste it. If it seems too acidic, add a bit of sugar. Add pepper now—you will add any salt later on. About five minutes in, add in the canned beans so everything can cook together for a bit. If the sauce is too thick and dry, you will know it—adjust with more wine or stock or even some water.
- When the beany sauce is nicely thick, add salt, if you want, to taste. Turn off the heat. Sprinkle the mozzarella evenly all over the top, then do the same with the parmesan. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes—the photo above shows this very handsomely browned top after 12 minutes in our fast oven. This is ready to serve. Enjoy!
Kitchen Notes
The greenery. Instead of spinach, you can use green or purple kale, torn into little bits, or dandelion or turnip greens, also torn into small pieces, or rapini, cut small.
The cheese. We used a full-fat mozzarella, but you may use part-skim if you prefer.
The beanery. Deb’s original of this dish, over at Smitten Kitchen, starts with dried gigante beans. But thanks to our usual Blue Kitchen magic combo of procrastination and laziness, here we used Great Northern white beans from cans—cannellini or navy beans would be great too. As it happens, cannellini beans are actually the most popular by far of the canned white beans, but supply chain weirdness meant we were unable to find any on the day we went shopping. Sigh.
May I freeze this? You betcha. Reheat directly from frozen in a 350ºF oven—please note it may take some time depending on the volume of frozen food you are reheating. Or if your microwave has an actually effective thawing feature for frozen foods, start with that—then finish either in the microwave or in the oven. Smaller portions can be reheated in a toaster oven.
Sauce, no beans? Just the sauce itself is delicious and may be made in vast quantities and frozen for future use on pasta, as a simmer sauce for chicken (adding a little liquid of course) or in any way you like to use a tomato sauce.
See Deb’s version. It includes her delightful origin story for the dish. You’ll find it here.