Tuscan White Bean & Sausage Stew

Ingredients

• 6 Italian pork sausages
• 2 x 400g tins cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• 200 ml chicken stock
• 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• 100 g cavolo nero, or kale, leaves stripped and roughly torn
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 tsp dried chilli flakes
• 100 ml white wine
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle
• crusty sourdough bread, to serve

Method

1. Heat the olive oil in a wide heavy-based pan over medium-high heat. Squeeze the sausage meat from the skins in rough chunks straight into the pan and season with a pinch of salt. Work in two batches if your pan is on the smaller side — crowd it and the meat steams in its own moisture instead of browning, and you lose the deep savoury crust this stew is built on. Fry for 6–8 minutes, breaking the meat into craggy pieces with a spoon, until properly golden. Lift out and set aside, leaving the fat behind.
2. Drop the heat to medium. Add the onion and grated carrot to the pan and cook for 6–7 minutes, stirring now and then, until softened and just starting to catch at the edges — that catch is flavour. Add the garlic, chilli flakes and fennel seeds and stir for about 30 seconds, just until fragrant. Don't let the garlic colour past pale gold; burnt garlic turns the whole stew bitter, and the fennel needs only that brief moment in the hot oil to bloom and smell like itself rather than dusty.
3. Pour in the white wine and let it bubble hard for 2 minutes, scraping up any sticky brown bits from the base of the pan — that's the fond, and it's where half the flavour lives. Stir in the chopped tomatoes, the chopped roasted pepper and the chicken stock. The stock is doing real work here: it breaks the tinned tomatoes down so they taste of fruit rather than tin. Simmer for 10 minutes, until the sauce has darkened and thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon.
4. Return the sausage meat along with any juices and tip in the cannellini beans. Simmer for 5 minutes until everything is piping hot and the sauce clings to the beans rather than pooling around them.
5. Stir in the cavolo nero and cook for 3 minutes until just wilted and glossy — any longer and it goes drab. Taste the stew now. Season generously with salt and black pepper, taste again, and adjust. Do it now, in the pan, not at the table.
6. Ladle into warm bowls, drizzle each one with a generous slick of extra virgin olive oil, and tear the crusty bread alongside for dragging through the sauce.