Jamie's Italy
My favourite ribollita (La mia ribollita preferita)
Proper rustic Italian soup with beans, cavolo nero, veg & bread
1 hr 35 mins
Super easy
serves 4
About the recipe
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. I think this recipe embraces the heart and soul of what peasant cooking is all about – cheap, tasty power food.
Recipe From
Ingredients
310g zolfini or cannellini beans, fresh, or dried and soaked overnight
1 bay leaf
1 tomato, squashed
1 small potato, peeled
2 small red onions, peeled
2 carrots, peeled
3 sticks of celery, trimmed
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
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
the best extra virgin olive oil you can find
Top Tip
Make it in advance to reheat the next day – you’ll find the flavours intensify.
Method
- Add your fresh or dried and soaked beans to a pan of water with the bay leaf – this will help to flavour the beans and soften their skins. Squash the tomato, peel the potato and add both to the pan. Cook until the beans are tender – taste one to check they’re nice and soft. Dried beans can take up to an hour, but check fresh ones after 25 minutes. Drain (reserving about half a glass of the cooking water), and discard the bay leaf, tomato and potato.
- Peel and finely chop your onions, carrots and garlic. Trim and finely chop the celery.
- 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 the lid just ajar for around 15 to 20 minutes until soft, but not brown.
- Add the tomatoes and bring to a gentle simmer for a few minutes.
- Add the cooked and drained beans with a little of the water they were cooked in, and bring back to the boil.
- Finely slice the cavolo nero (stalks and all) and add to the pan – it will look like loads, but don’t worry as it will cook down.
- Tear the bread into chunks, then moisten with a little of the cooking water and stir it in too. 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.
- Season the ribollita with sea salt and black pepper, and stir in 4 good lugs of good-quality Tuscan extra virgin olive oil before serving to give it a glossy velvety texture.
- Delicious served on a cold winter’s day with lots and lots of Chianti!
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