tagliatelle ai fagioli di sant'anna


tagliatelle in tomato sauce with green beans and anchovies
St Anna’s Day (26th July) beans really are ‘a thing’ in Tuscany - though there they use a much longer and thinner variety of green bean than we have in the UK. They’re served normally as a side dish and cooked with plum tomatoes, garlic and anchovies. So here’s an idea for a tomato-based sauce with an intense tomato taste - using both fresh and sun-dried tomatoes - which of course you can use as a base to add other ingredients like bacon or sausage to.
WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)
prepare the ingredients
make the tomato sauce
allow time to pass
boil the beans
melt the anchovies
cook garlic
add beans to anchovies
boil pasta
combine sauce and pasta
add beans

tagliatelle in tomato sauce with green beans and anchovies
INGREDIENTS
FOR FOUR PEOPLE
300g fresh plum tomatoes
150g blended sun-dried tomatoes
400g fine green beans
anchovy fillets
fresh basil leaves
black pepper
parmesan / pecorino
PASTA
400g dry egg tagliatelle
MANTECATURA (?)
none

METHOD
Begin by slicing and cooking the fresh tomatoes in EVO, together with a crushed clove of garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste, together with a handful of torn basil leaves. Let the sauce cook and simmer for at least half and hour, adding more water if it gets really dry - but remember that you’re aiming to arrive at the consistency of slightly running apple sauce, nothing too liquid! Set it aside when you’re happy.
Boil the beans until well cooked - no crunch or rigidity left in them, as they need to flop and bend around the past, but not so much as to turn them khaki coloured! Chop up the anchovies into small pieces and fry gently in EVO until they ‘melt’. Add a crushed garlic clove half way through but don’t allow it to burn or even colour at all. Drain and add the beans to the anchovies and garlic and toss briefly for a minute, allowing the flavours to combine. Set them aside.

Boil and cook the pasta until al dente and then finish the cooking in your sauce wok with about half the total tomato sauce you've made, plus some cooking water from the pasta. Toss and let the sauce combine with the pasta but don’t go too starchy. Add more tomato sauce to taste.
When you’re happy, plate each portion, adding a handful of beans to each one (don’t add them to the pasta in the sauce wok as you’ll lose a lot of the anchovy taste to the sauce). Serve with grated parmesan, pecorino and black or cayenne pepper.
NUTRITION per serving
KCAL: we're working on it!
Fat (g): TBC
Sat Fat (g): TBC
Carb (g): TBC
Sug (g): TBC
Fibre(g): TBC
Prot (g): TBC
Salt (g): TBC
