Slow-cooked Tuscan Cannellini Beans in Flask

This week, we’re back in the La Fortezza kitchen, cooking one of my most versatile side dishes. This traditional way of preparing beans Tuscan style has been a staple of the region for centuries. Once your wood fire or forno is burning out, you can slow cook these beans overnight, ready for lunch the next day. Most old homes in Italy have a fireplace in the kitchen, and it became the central heat in a house back in the day. In the winter families would congregate in the kitchen and use the fireplace for both heating and cooking. Tuscan farmers cooked beans on the embers of the fireplace where most meals were cooked. They would place the beans with water and spices in a glass jar — most likely a chianti bottle — in a corner of the fireplace on the embers before going to bed. The next morning the beans would be cooked and warm. I use La Fortezza’s traditional outdoor forno (pizza oven) to cook beans in this manner. The slow cooking results in creamier beans, but you can replicate t