Ribollita

During our stay in Florence, Italy, my husband discovered a new food: Ribollita, also known as "Tuscan Soup". It became his favorite meal at restaurants, along with gnocchi.

When we returned home, I decided to try to make ribollita. This is basically a combination of leftover minestrone soup and leftover bread. True peasant food.

I googled "Ribollita", and came up with quite a few recipes. They all involved chopping up vegetables, including lots of greens, white beans, and stale bread. The true Ribollita includes black cabbage, which I don't think is available around here at all.

I chose the one that seemed to have the most potential for authenticity, the most availability of ingredients, and the shortest cooking time. The winner was a recipe from 2003 posted by dmele.

(2021 - recipe location updated)

It calls for 3 cups of greens (chard, mustard greens, or spinach), shredded, and I chose KALE, because I thought its substantial leaf would stand up to the hours of cooking involved. In addition, with the use of vegetable broth it ends up being not only vegetarian, but vegan. (More obsession on vegan cooking later.)

Preparation took about 30 minutes, cooking about 2 hours. I used the immersible blender to whiz it up a bit.

I had some day-old bread, but it didn't seem to be, well, stale, so I cubed up some of the day-old bread and left it out on the bread board for a few hours to get good and stale. I added it to the soup, cooked the soup a while longer and was surprised to see that the bread puffed up like marshmallows!! It whisked right in, giving the soup a thick consistency.

They say that the true ribollita should be thick enough to eat with a fork.

The family review was that it was GREAT. Definitely passed the test. I caught the daughter sneaking a second bowl later in the evening, which is a very good sign.