Ribollita

Ribollita

One of the quintessential Tuscan dishes is undoubtedly the Ribollita, every family guards its special recipe, the one that we prepare is one of the oldest versions.
A first distinction to make is between Bread Soup and Ribollita: the Ribollita is the bread soup sautéed with olive oil and then ​​“boiled again” or boiled twice like the name suggests.
The main ingredient of the recipe for the Ribollita is the black cabbage, a typical Tuscan vegetable, which in the past was quite difficult to find elsewere.
The secret for an excellent Ribollita is to wait for the winter to prepare it: the cabbage must have undergone the first frost, it acts on its fibers loosening them and making the leaves softer.
We must therefore prepare a bread soup which we will then boil twice.

Ingredients for the Bread Soup:

  • 12 slices of stale Tuscan bread (large slices, obtained from the shape of the 1kg-size bread)
  • 1/2 kg of zolfini or toscanelli beans (plus sage and garlic to cook them)
  • 2 dl of extra virgin olive oil La Camporena
  • 1 bunch of black cabbage
  • 1/2 verza cabbage
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 onion
  • 1 leek
  • 1 stalk of celery
  • 1 pinch of thyme
  • 100 g bacon
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • salt and pepper

    • Procedure:
    First, boil the beans with sage and garlic.
    Place the oil in a saucepan, add the diced bacon, onion, carrot, celery and fry at low heat. Add the verza cabbage cut into strips and the black cabbage (if it is particularly tough, remove the central part, or slam it down on the work surface a couple of times) cut into slices. Before cutting the cabbage we advise you to soften it by slamming it hard a couple of times against the work surface, if it proves especially hard we recommend that you remove the central part.
    Add the leek and carrot cut into slices.
    Squash with a mill half of the boiled beans and add them to the soup along with their cooking liquid. Add a tablespoon of tomato paste to the mixture.
    After half an hour, add the remaining beans and cook for another forty minutes, taking care that the soup does not dry out too much. Add a pinch of thyme at the end.
    Take a large ceramic bowl and place on the bottom the slices of bread and cover them with the vegetable soup, cover this layer with another layer of bread and so on until you finish the soup.

    Let the Bread Soup rest for at least one day, then you can turn it into a Ribollita. If you can not resist after so much work you can use the leftovers of the soup to make the Ribollita!
    Heat up a pan with plenty of olive oil, when it is hot add the bread soup and cook until it “bubbles” and it forms a patina on the bottom. Add a generous sprinkling of pepper and a splash of extra virgin olive oil La Camporena

     

     

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