Bryan Martin's cavatelli con fagioli (pasta with mussels and cannellini beans)

Like many small business owners, I've been busy this last week trying to find ways to help Tony and Joe get this economy going by taking advantage of their "$20k challenge". If you've managed to keep your business under their revenue ceiling – which I have no problem with by mainly buying things I don't need and finding ways to creatively waste time – you get to write off new assets.

This is brilliant, as I can come up with many things I need that won't cost me quite $20,000. Without daydreaming too much, as I've got lots of business stuff to attend to like visiting the accountant, my shortlist would be: A jet-ski (I don't live near a large water mass but I reckon I could tear around my dam for a few minutes each day before it clogged the craft up with mud); a 1959 Fender duo-sonic lead guitar (Jimi had one); a luxury cruise around the Italian coast. Sure, after spending time in my youth working on a cruise liner, I swore I'd rather have unnecessary dental work than ever get on one of these floating food troughs again where the idea was to transfer 30 tonnes of food from the larders to the stomachs, thighs and arms of a thousand expanding passengers.

I come out of my reverie of water sports, Hendrix and the Adriatic coast, with my accountant patiently reminding me, again, that I'm confusing lifestyle and leisure activities with those that are remotely business related.

"We" settle on looking for a new mower, a post-hole digger, and a computer. This all makes me late for my deadline. Oh, crap, now I'm late so I pick up on my thoughts of the Italian coast and I'm running. Again, thinking back to my travels as a young man, my brother and I spent time travelling together through Italy, Greece and the former Yugoslavia. Those were carefree times – lots of new experiences and doing fairly reckless things like charging unhelmeted through coastal towns on motorbikes, drinking and eating anything. The crossing from Italy to Greece is from the region of Puglia, a sundrenched region full of olive groves, little towns perched on hills and the beautiful Adriatic coast.

Coming from early '80s Canberra, we were overwhelmed by the variety of seafood you could get there. It certainly wasn't a wealthy area so the food was simple, robust, yet so very fresh. Little black mussels, much like we grow in Australia, were everywhere. You can pair these mussels with a pasta and bean dish to make cavatelli con fagioli e cozze.

It's a basic dish, no tomato or meat, based on onion, garlic and celery with white cannellini beans. The mussels, their briny cooking liquid and a pinch of chilli give it interest, seasoning and piquancy. The pasta, based on semolina and water, is a rustic dumpling of sorts. It's a bit of work to make but luckily available as dried imported pasta. You can use orecchiette, or even penne, but buy good quality products as always.

Cavatelli con fagioli

500g cannellini beans
2 red onions
3 stalk celery
4 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
500g cavatelli pasta (see below)
1kg black mussels, cleaned
100ml dry white wine
1 small red onion, sliced
chopped parsley
olive oil
dried chilli flakes
salt and pepper

Dissolve 1 tbsp of salt in 2 litres of water and soak the beans in this for 8-24 hours, drain and rinse. Finely chop the onion, celery, garlic and a few sprigs of parsley together, keep a few tablespoons of this mixture on the side to cook with the mussels. In a good sized, heavy-based stock pot, saute the vegies and bay leaves in a really good splash of a robust olive oil.

Cook over a moderate heat until soft then add 1 cup of water, bring to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes. Remove bay leaves and blend this to a thick stock.

Place soaked beans in a pot with thickened stock and enough water to cover the beans. Bring to a simmer and cook this over a low heat until beans are very tender. Add extra water if the beans look a little too thick. The idea is to have a saucy bean and pasta dish at the end.

Bring a pot of water to the boil, add salt and cook the pasta until just cooked through. Drain and add to the beans. Clean the pot and place back on the heat.

Add a big splash of olive oil and saute the extra vegies you kept aside until sizzling, deglaze with the wine and add the mussels. Put the lid on and gently shake the pot for a few minutes until the mussels open. Scoop out the mussels and stir their cooking liquid through the pasta and beans. Pour this into a serving bowl, garnish with sliced red onion, parsley and mussels.

Cavatelli pasta

2 cups plain unbleached flour
1 cup fine semolina
1 tsp salt
1 cup water

Sift together the flour, semolina and salt. Make a mound then hollow out then add the water and start mixing in the flour with a fork. Once you can handle the dough, knead until it's quite firm but not tough.

Form into a ball and leave it to rest for about an hour. Cut the dough into four pieces and roll these out to ropes about 1cm in diameter. Cut each rope into small discs, flatten with your thumb and, in one movement, roll the disc into a little tube. Keep covered with a tea towel until needed.