La Ribollita is one of those traditional dishes that identifies the Tuscans. A “poor dish” as many others recipes of our tradition. Indeed the peasant culture created nourishing healthy tasty dishes with simple ingredients. Ribollita is originally a peasant food, typical of the Tuscan countryside and follows the traditions of “ cucina povera”: “poor man’s food”. Ribollita means “boiled again” and refers to the fact that the vegetable soup was prepared and then, the following day, before eating it was warmed up – boiled again. The idea was to use leftover bread and vegetable soup from the previous days. Ribollita is something that has been “re-boiled” because the vegetables soup is cooked again together with the stale bread over the fire or in the oven to make it “boil”. This procedure marked the flavours making it even tastier with a drizzle of EVO oil. The best is eating it with a fresh spring onion. The Ribollita is one of the most popular dishes of rustic Tuscan cuisine. Throughout Tuscany every town has its own version, there is not a unique recipe, mandatory rule however includes beans and black Tuscan cabbage.
INGREDIENTS
400 gr. natural leavened Tuscan bread baked in a wood oven
400 gr. beans
Two cloves of garlic
200 gr. black cabbage
200 gr. Cabbage kale
2 carrots
2 or 3 potatoes
A bunch of local beets ( 1 bouquet chard)
Two stalks of celery
6 or 7 small Tuscan tomatoes that hung are also preserved for the winter
Extra virgin olive oil
Onion to be used as a spoon
PROCEDURE
1. Soak the beans for 12 hours, in a terracotta pan, cover with water, add
a clove of garlic (you can also put a little sage) and no salt. Cook them in
wood-burning oven. If the beans tend to drain, add other boiling water in,
so that at the end the liquid is plentiful. Blanch the black cabbage in a little water add the chards and chop them coarsely, put them in an earthenware pan with chopped celery
chopped, diced potatoes, carrots in rounds, kale, small tomatoes and EVO oil.
2. Fry , add the boiling water of the beans and cook over low heat until
The vegetables are well cooked. Put half beans through a vegetable mill and add the puréed beans to the pan with the vegetables and keep on cooking for another thirty minutes.
3. Thin slices of stale bread are alternated in an earthenware pan with cooked vegetables and the whole beans making various layers and wetting with the cooking water. Put the pan so filled and covered in oven at low temperature (less than 150 degrees) better if
wood-burning oven.
4.Mix from time to time to obtain a homogeneous ribollita that is eaten
with a drizzle of oil using as a spoon a red sheet of onion Savonese or Certaldo onion (a particularly sweet variety) dipped in a pile of salt placed next to each diner.