Acquacotta

A long-cooked vegetable broth poured over stale bread, with an egg poached in it at the end.

Egg. Not vegetarian — contains pecorino whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 onions, sliced thinly
• 2 sticks celery, sliced
• 400 g ripe tomatoes, chopped
• 1.2 litres water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 slices stale country bread
• 4 eggs
• 40 g pecorino, grated

Method

1. Cook the onions and celery in the oil over a low heat for 25 minutes, stirring now and then. They should collapse and go sweet without browning — this is most of the flavour the soup will ever have, and it cannot be hurried.
2. Add the tomatoes and cook another 10 minutes until they have broken down.
3. Add the water and the salt and simmer, uncovered, for 40 minutes.
4. Toast the bread and put a slice in the bottom of each bowl.
5. Crack the eggs one at a time into the simmering soup and poach them 3 minutes, until the whites are set and the yolks still soft.
6. Lift an egg onto each slice of bread, ladle the soup over, and scatter the pecorino on top.
7. THE BREAD GOES IN THE BOWL, NOT THE PAN. Simmered in the soup it disintegrates into porridge; sat under hot broth it softens and still holds a shape under a spoon.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes