Creamy white beans with sausage make a hearty one-pan meal

A scarpetta, in Italian, is a small shoe. But it has another definition, which I prefer: The scrap of bread you drag over the bottom of a dish, to clean up any lingering swipes of sauce or soup. It’s a useful and delicious thing, a last bite that sings. And you’re going to want a scarpetta when you serve this recipe, a dish of creamy cannellini beans in a sage-infused tomato sauce.

It’s from “Via Carota: A Celebration of Seasonal Cooking from the Beloved Greenwich Village Restaurant” by Jody Williams and Rita Sodi, with Anna Kovel. I love Via Carota. I love the warm lighting and wooden chairs, the marble bar and white china. As a former New York resident, I’m lucky to have eaten there many times – alone at the bar with a plate of pasta and glass of wine and at a table with half a dozen friends where we shared all of the vegetable dishes and the entire dessert menu.

It’s a special place for a lot of people, but Via Carota is especially dear to its owners. In fact, it’s a love story, which they tell in the book’s introduction: For 15 years, Sodi maintained a home on Via del Carota in Bagno a Ripoli, in the southeast of Florence, beginning when she worked in fashion. Williams and Sodi met at Sodi’s first restaurant, I Sodi. A few years later, Williams opened her own place, Buvette, also in the neighborhood, and the pair married. They spent years working at their restaurants, though they occasionally stole away to their restored 17th-century stone villa in Florence, sharing meals on the 10-foot chestnut table near the wood-burning hearth.

But in the early 2010s, with their restaurants packed every night, Sodi and Williams grew too busy to visit their villa. They decided to sell it – and open another restaurant together in New York. “Jody jokes that we opened Via Carota on Grove Street so we could actually see each other,” Sodi writes. Indeed, the restaurant forced them back into the same kitchen and brought a little bit of that stone villa magic to New York City.

One of the many things the two women have in common is their love for simple vegetable dishes. “We prefer a table full of vegetables. … We always want more vegetables, more tastes and textures. We crave antipasti, salads, beans, and vegetables. They are the triumphs of the season, each emphasizing one ingredient. Importantly, they are also for sharing,” they write in their book. And so what follows is a seasonal tour through the vegetables, herbs, beans and fruits of each season – with a few meatier dishes and beverages sprinkled in between. Not only are dishes like ramps with pancetta and polenta; shaved raw white asparagus with aged balsamic; marinated green tomatoes with bottarga; and Brussels sprouts salad with walnuts and apples wonderful to eat and share, with a singular vegetable’s flavor at their center, but they’re remarkably easy to make and memorize.

For this, Fagioli all’Uccelletto, Cannellini With Sage, Tomato and Sausage, you saute crumbled Italian sausage in olive oil with crushed garlic cloves and fresh sage. Once the sausage is browned, add a large can of crushed tomatoes and cook until the sauce is thick and glossy. Stir in a few cups of cooked cannellini beans and finish the dish in the oven, so that the sauce caramelizes on the edges of the pan and the beans pick up the flavor of the sausage and sage. I made the dish twice and have now committed it to memory. Each time, I served it with a loaf of crusty bread for dipping, scooping – and for a scarpetta to clean the bottom of the bowl.

Cannellini With Sage, Tomato and Sausage

Adapted from “Via Carota” by Jody Williams and Rita Sodi with Anna Kovel (Knopf, 2022).

This simple bean dish is full of wintry flavors. Sage pairs especially well with the fennel in Italian sausage, but parsley or rosemary would work here, too. Use homemade cannellini for the best flavor – though of course canned beans make this a pantry-friendly recipe.

If you want to make this vegan, consider sauteing chopped mushrooms and shallots with a sprinkle of fennel seeds and dried oregano until they’re browned, before adding the tomatoes and beans.

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for drizzling, if desired

2 sweet Italian sausages (about 8 ounces total), casings removed

2 cloves garlic, smashed

4 fresh sage leaves

One (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes

Two (15-ounce) cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained (may substitute 3 cups cooked cannellini beans)

1/4 teaspoon fine salt, plus more as needed

Freshly ground black pepper

4 large slices crusty bread, for serving

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees. Heat a large, ovenproof saute pan over medium-high heat and add the olive oil. Once the oil shimmers, crumble the sausage into the pan. Add the garlic and sage, and cook, stirring and breaking up the sausage, until the sausage is browned, about 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, stir up any brown bits at the bottom of the pan and decrease the heat to medium. Cook until the sauce thickens and turns glossy, about 10 minutes.

Stir in the beans, salt and a few grinds of pepper. Transfer to the oven and roast, uncovered, for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the edges are crispy and browned. Drizzle with the olive oil, if desired, and serve with bread on the side for dipping.

Yield: 4 servings