Recipes

There’s often confusion as to what ribollita should actually be like. It’s not like minestrone, as it isn’t brothy and it has no pasta in it. It’s actually more like pappa al pomodoro, as it’s thick and based on bread. It’s very much Italian ‘peasant food’ and would have been eaten a lot in the days of no central heating and lots of hard manual labour.  Please do make it and reheat it the next day – you’ll find the flavours intensify.

• 310g cannellini beans, fresh, or dried and soaked overnight
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tomato diced
• 1 small potato, peeled and diced
• 2 carrots and 2 small onions, peeled and finely chopped
• 3 sticks of celery, trimmed and finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• olive oil
• a pinch of ground fennel seeds
• a pinch of dried red chilli
• 1 x 400g tin of good-quality plum tomatoes
• 310g cavolo nero, leaves and stalks finely sliced
• 2 large handfuls of good-quality stale bread, torn into chunks
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• extra virgin olive oil to garnish (best you can afford)

1. Add your fresh or dried and soaked beans to a pan of water with the bay leaf, diced tomato and potato . Cook until tender. Drain (reserving about half a glass of the cooking water),
2. Heat a saucepan with a splash of olive oil and add the vegetables to the pan with the ground fennel seeds and chilli. Sweat very slowly on a low heat with until soft, but not brown.
3. Add the tin tomatoes and bring to a gentle simmer for a few minutes.
4. Add the cooked and drained beans with a little of the water they were cooked in, and bring back to the boil. 
5. Stir in the sliced cavolo 
6. Moisten the bread with a little of the cooking water and add as well.
7. The soup should be thick but not dry, so add a little more cooking water if you need to loosen it. Continue cooking for about 30 minutes
   – you want to achieve a silky, thick soup.
   
   Should be a thick silky soup.Season  with salt and pepper and garnish with extra virgin olive oil just before serving.