It's Whats for Dinner

I made this for dinner tonight and thought it worth sharing, as it meets so many dinner criteria in my mind: healthy, low fat (when you use lean sausage), pretty fast, not too expensive, and tasty! I also need to write it down for later, as I've soaked my copy with tea treated with cream and honey. It's from the Feb 2005 Real Simple. I used lean sausage & didn't use any oil. I also roughly 2/3rded (?!) the recipe and used a 9x13 baking dish.

Cannellini Bean and Sausage Gratin

3 T olive oil
4 sweet Italian sausages (about 1 lb), casings removed
1 small bulb fennel, chopped (I added another onion in place of this, as the fennel was expensive)
1 small onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 T chopped sage (I used dried ground)
1 bunch swiss chard, stems removed, chopped
1/2 c chicken broth
2 15-oz cans cannellini beans, drained
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 c seasoned bread crumbs
1/3 grated Parmesan

Preheat oven to 350. Coat an 8-by-10-inch baking or gratin dish with oil (Pam). In a large skillet, cook over medium-high heat, crumble the sausages and cook, breaking up, until golden brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove the sausage from skillet and set aside (I actually needed to cook the onion and garlic with the sausage because it had too little fat to brown properly). Add the fennel and onion to skillet and cook until translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and sage and cook 1 minute more. Add the Swiss chard, a handful at a time, sitrring until slightly wilted. Stir in the broth, beans, sausage, salt, and pepper. Spoon the mixture into the baking dish and set aside. In a small bowl, sitr together the bread crumbs and Parmesan with the remaining olive oil. Sprinkle the breadcrumb mixture on top and bake until golden brown and bubbly, about 30 minutes.