Culinary Experimentation Gone Right

I don’t know what prompted me to do it. I don’t know the source of the idea. All I know is that it worked. The recipe sounds downright bizarre, I know, but trust me it really is good.

1 cup whole cream
2 lg cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
several sprigs of fresh thyme (or ~1 tsp dried if no fresh is handy)
1 bay leaf
2 cups cooked cannellini beans (Rancho Gordo{.broken_link} preferred of course but canned will do in a pinch)
1/4 cup small pimento-stuffed green olives (you don’t need them ALL for martinis), drained and rinsed

Preheat oven to about 350 degrees. In a small saucepot, steep the garlic, thyme and bay leaf in the cream. Be careful that it doesn’t boil over (which can happen in a heartbeat). Steep that at very low heat for about 15 minutes or so. Remove the thyme stems and the bay leaf. Mix the beans and olives in a bowl. Pour the cream over this mixture and stir to combine. Pour the mixture into a small buttered pan or casserole. Put in the oven and bake for about an hour. It should be slightly browned on top and bubbly along the sides.

Honest, this is TASTY. Easy and tasty, though it does take a bit of (mostly unattended) time. Some out there may balk at the use of cream and the high fat content that it brings to the party but to them I say, “Bah!” This is a side dish, not a main dish. Just don’t serve much of it to yourself (thereby ensuring many days of tasty leftovers) and you can dodge that self-imposed guilt. When you really look at it this dish is very nutritious and filling plus it’s full of all-natural basic ingredients. Read the side of the box of that Stove-Top Stuffing or pasta salad that you’ve got in your pantry and tell me whether you can say the same thing about it. Besides, cannellinis love cream. They deserve to be together.