Tonno e fagioli (Tuna and bean salad)
- Preparation time: 10 minutes.
- Cooking time: 1 hour.
- 500g fresh cannellini beans
- Sage
- 200g tuna fish in oil
- Garlic
- Salt
- Black pepper
- Extra-virgin oil.
- Optional: fresh onion, pickled capers.
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Put the beans in approximately two and a half litres of cold, salted water with the garlic and sage and cook over a low heat for about one hour. Drain well. Arrange on the plates with the tuna fish.Dress with oil and season with pepper. The dish can also be decorated with crisp, raw onion rings or sprinkled with a handful of capers, which should be well drained of the vinegar as the acidity might spoil the delicate balance of flavours. This dish is also suitable as a main course to follow a rather filling starter or pasta dish, or it may also be served as a handy, quick lunch. It is best served with crispy, wholemeal bread.
Cannellini beans are a speciality of Florentine cooking: they are a delicacy, fresh, in late summer. Florentines adore and eat all kinds of beans, indeed, long before the discovery of America the variety known as 'black-eyed bean' was grown in the surrounding.
