Although this is the kind of rhetoric one usually saves for significantly-numbered wedding anniversary speeches, sometimes you lock eyes with a cookbook from across the crowded marketplace of ideas and think “aha! yes!” and immediately foresee many happy years of culinarily monogomous bliss together. In this case it was not one but three Claire Thomson cookbooks, all borrowed from the library but destined to become for-life fixtures. And though this recipe begins with manhandling sausage to coax their insides out; the results is shockingly fast and lovely, and so perfectly formed that I didn’t need to tinker with it materially at all—and which I now humbly present to you: Mascarpone butter beans with sausage and gremolata.

And I do mean humbly. I don’t even know what food blogging means as we sink into a war-fuelled fuel crisis on top of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, neither of which the government care about. It’s a weird dichotomy, where I obstinately don’t want a group of psychopathic men’s multi-pronged greed-trips to be a reason to stop blogging. I also don’t want to be laminating croissant dough while Rome burns. I honestly don’t know; and while I’m mad about this, it pales in comparison to other things I’m mad about and we’ll work out what’s the most important thing to be mad about as and when it happens. Either way, it probably won’t be this food blog.

To the recipe, while we can: The aforementioned sausage is a crucial part of this, providing well-seasoned sumptuousness at triple the speed of doing almost anything else; you then merely have to briefly simmer tomatoes and dunk the beans in and it’s basically done, leaving you a moment to roughly chop some lemon zest, parsley and garlic, which combined, give it a sprightly, elegant, highlighter-across-the-browbone lift. After the sausage, the gremolata is the next most important flavour-factor, providing contrasting perkiness to the rich, bolstering butter beans bathing in their tomato sauce.

Mascarpone seems almost flagrantly luxurious when paired with the humility of beans, but beans can and should be opulent as well as workhorse! The mascarpone’s clay-cool, buttery fatness splices open the simmered tomato sauce’s acidity; should you be unable to get hold of any, I am very sure a generous splash of cream would also be excellent here.

It’s just SO good, and I will continue making this frequently—especially given that frozen proper sausages can be defrosted fairly quickly by sitting them in a bowl of cold water. The sauciness would suggest dunkable bread alongside, or perhaps even being stirred through a long pasta for a dish of sleep-inducing substantiality; that being said, each time I’ve made it the creamy, rubbly beans themselves have been enough of a star to not require accompaniment. (I have also been disorganised every single time.)

Much as beans can and should be used in meaty dishes, it does, admittedly, feel churlish. To mollify those who would justifiably prefer their beans meatless, I also suggest these no-less-luxurious recipes for Triple Tomato Beans; Freeform Black Bean Cobbler; Pasta with Harissa, Beans and Feta; and Instant Gnocchi, Big Beans and Red Chilli Pesto Sauce.

Mascarpone butter beans, sausage and gremolata

This is fast and furiously good; the mascarpone makes it an undeniable indulgence; you could replace it with a splash of cream instead. As always, before shopping for these or any ingredients, I recommend checking out the Boycott Aotearoa zines so you know which brands to avoid. Adapted very lightly for two people from a recipe by Claire Thomson from her book One Pan Beans.

• 2-3 good beef sausages—the non-precooked kind
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 x 400g can chopped tomatoes (though I like using canned cherry tomatoes)
• 20g parsley
• Two strips of zest from a lemon
• 100g mascarpone
• 1 x 400g tin butter beans
• black pepper and a little freshly grated nutmeg to serve plus (optional but good) chilli flakes

1: Squeeze and extrude the sausagemeat from its casing and break into small pieces—there’s no getting around how odd this looks and feels, but such is life. Heat the two tablespoons of olive oil in a wide saucepan, and fry the sausage meat, stirring now and then, until browned and caramelised in places. I like to throw the vacant skins in as well for a little chef’s treat.

2: Slice two of the three garlic cloves and add them to the pan, stirring for a minute, then tip in the 400g tin of tomatoes. Let it simmer over a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, at which point it should be reduced and saucy.

3: While this is happening, use a large knife to finely chop the remaining garlic clove, the 20g parsley, and the lemon zest into a green-gold rubble. Stir the 100g mascarpone into the tomato-sausage mixture, then add the drained tin of butter beans and half the gremolata, stirring to warm through the beans. Remove from the heat and add black pepper and freshly ground nutmeg (or a tiny pinch dried) to taste. Plus chilli if you want it, which I do sometimes.

4: Serve in bowls scattered with the remaining gremolata.

Serves 2.

Notes:

• You can make this go much further, cheaply, by adding another tin of drained butter beans. I’ve also made this with both two and with three sausages, it tastes luxurious either way.
• The original recipe suggests pork sausages; they’d undoubtedly be excellent as well.

what I’ve been listening to lately:

Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve), the song title is annoyingly overburdened with apostrophes but the song is so perennially exquisite, no matter how happy you are this song WILL reliably make you feel like a car has driven through a puddle and now your jeans are sodden, I am saying this glowingly and positively of course.

Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz, I’m enjoying their new album but their patchy self-titled debut still means the most to me—as albums that coincide with formative eras of burgeoning attempted independence often do—but even so, this song is so undeniable, makes so much sense coming from cartoons, and the merging of Del the Funky Homosapien’s jovial rapping with Damon Albarn’s congested slack-eyelidded mumbling and the sinister, lurching piano chords feels effortless.

Why Can’t You Behave by Jessica Walter from Kiss Me Kate, which she co-starred in with Carol Lawrence and a shockingly mustache-less Robert Goulet and which I LONG to see footage of. There’s not much to this but her voice is gorgeously sinewy and Cole Porter was incapable of being boring.

PS: Feeling hopeless is a luxury that serves no one but those perpetrating the hopelessness, despite the hopelessness being accelerated beyond comprehension daily. The people of Palestine need us now more than ever; aside from directly sending money when you see personal videos pop up as you scroll instagram, you can support:

• ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal, who are connected with teams on the ground in Gaza.
• Convoys of Good, another registered NZ charity distributing aid.
• As I’ve already mentioned, you can also demonstrate your control and power through the absence of your dollars. Boycott Zine Aotearoa has helpfully put together two comprehensive free zines so you can quickly see who to studiously avoid when buying food, drinks, household items and beauty products.
• You can also check out the Pro-Palestine Business Aotearoa account by the same people for a very solid list of places to actively focus your consumer attention on.