Ribollita

A bean and cavolo nero soup with bread, boiled again the next day.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 300 g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight
• 500 g cavolo nero, stalks stripped out
• 300 g stale unsalted Tuscan bread, torn
• 2 onions, 2 carrots, 2 celery sticks, chopped
• 400 g tinned tomatoes
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 8 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt

Method

1. Cook the soaked beans in unsalted water with the rosemary and two garlic cloves, 70 minutes, and salt them only when soft. Keep the water.
2. PASS HALF THE BEANS THROUGH A SIEVE and leave the rest whole. The purée is what gives the body — there is no flour and no potato in this.
3. Soften the onion, carrot, celery and remaining garlic in half the oil for 15 minutes, add the tomatoes, then the cavolo nero, and cook 30 minutes in the bean water.
4. Strip the tough central stalk out of every cavolo nero leaf. They never soften and they are unpleasant in a spoon.
5. Add both the puréed and whole beans and the torn bread, and cook 20 minutes more.
6. NOW COOL IT AND LEAVE IT OVERNIGHT, THEN BOIL IT AGAIN. Re-boiling is the dish, not a way of using up leftovers: the bread breaks down completely the second time and the soup goes from chunky to almost solid.
7. Serve with a hard thread of raw oil over each bowl.

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