COOKING TUSCAN STYLE

 TASTE OF TUSCANY

THE RIBOLLITA VEGETABLE SOUP

A journey through our country may start from the most intimate place of your home...your kitchen! You can learn step by step how to cook the most famous Tuscan Speciality and surprise all your friends.

Our Chef is keen on Ribollita and he likes to cook it freshly using local products.

You will find Our Special Ribollita on our Menù à la carte at any time of the season. Of course this is a soup and it is better to enjoy it in winter time. But as we are Tuscans we love it all year round and we found it fab especially at dinner with a glass of Chianti Wine!

What's the Ribollita?

Ribollita

is a simple and inexpensive Soup made with stale unsalted Tuscan bread

and a variety of vegetables including the typical Tuscan kale.

We commonly call it ribollita

because it is consumed the day after its preparation

when it is warmed up in a pot with extra olive oil and reboiled.

Prep time:

30 mins

Cook time: 15 mins

Total time: 45 mins

Ingredients

·         400 g dried cannellini beans

·          400 g of dried unsalted bread

·        400 g of Tuscan kale

·        700 g white cabbage

·        300 g swiss chard

·       2 medium sized potatoes

·        1 spoon of tomato paste

·         thyme

·        1 onion

·        2 garlic cloves

·        2 celery stalks

·         2 carrots

·          extra virgin olive oil

·         salt and pepper

  Instructions

1   Soak the beans overnight then discard the water and boil them in abundant water until soft adding salt towards the end. Drain them (keeping the water), blend half of them in a food mixer and keep 1/3 of the beans whole.

      Chop the carrot, celery, onion, garlic and sauté with oil in a large saucepan with some thyme. After a few minutes add the cut up potatoes and the other vegetables together with the spoonful of tomato paste that you need to melt in a little warm water.

3   Next pour in the liquid that you kept aside when boiling the beans and the purèed beans and let the soup cook at a low temperature for an hour, just before you finish cooking the vegetables add the beans.

     Slice the bread into thin slices and place them into the pot with the soup and stir for a few minutes. Take the pot away from the stove and add salt, pepper and some olive oil.

5    Now, at this point you should leave your soup to rest…..if you can’t wait go ahead and taste it knowing that in this phase it is not a ribollita soup, since it hasn’t reboiled! The next day use some olive oil to reboil it for a few minutes and pour a little extra virgin olive oil.