Cannellini al Gratin

I've been trying to learn how to cook of late. I never really cooked before moving to this town. My father, when I was young and impressionable, told me I was trying to poison him when I attempted to make spaghetti sauce from scratch and added too many different spices. Who says that to their child who is just trying to learn and experiment. This before the internet so I could not google a recipe, and my mother left when I was three so I had no one to show me how. That being said, when my husband and I moved to this lovey town two and a half years ago, I was board at work and the only thing I could access from my work computer was the companies recipe directory. I look at these recipes all day, finally I found one that looked very simple and I thought "hey I can do that". So began my journey to learn how to cook.

Ingredients:

1. 2 Onions


2. 2 Carrots


3. Fresh Thyme


4. Fresh Parsley


5. 1 & 1/2 pounds of cannellini beans


6. 1 medium fennel bulb, stalks, and fronds


7. Cloves of garlic


8. White wine vinegar


9. Grated Parmesan cheese


10. Breadcrumbs

I totally missed the part about Cloves (not cloves of garlic), but oh well.

So you soak the beans over night in cold water.

Then I cooked the beans for 40 minutes with thyme and parsley tied together with tooth floss (don't do this it dissolves, I need to get cooking twine), the half of the onion with skin on sans the cloves, fennel fonds and stalks and some garlic. 

 Next you cook the carrots and fennel bulb for 10 minutes then add chopped onion, cooked for 6-8 minutes more then add garlic cook for one minutes then remove from heat and add the white wine vinegar. 

Then you add it all together put it in a pot and stick it in the oven for 45 minutes and out comes something that looks like this.

Now mine certainly looked like this. However since I forgot to mix in the Parmesan cheese before cooking it turn out a little bland. I remedied this situation with some catchup. My husband though he says he was not avoiding it, did not eat any of this last night. We'll see if he braves this new vegetarian dish tonight.

But over all it turn out fine. I'm enjoying trying different dishes and recipes.

~Cheers~

Recipe from Vegetarian Times (January/February 2011)