Tuscan ribollita soup 

Tuscan ribollita prepared with the original recipe is a soup made with vegetables, stale bread and cannellini beans. A warm and tasty first course. Tuscan cuisine is one of its strong points in ribollita. A warm and hearty soup made with black cabbage, cabbage, escarole (or chard) and cannellini beans. Ribollita owes its name to the fact that this soup is cooked several times, then re-boiled. In the past, ribollita was prepared on a Friday (lean days) with leftovers from the day before. The original Tuscan recipe for ribollita calls for cooking beans from dried beans; To shorten the cooking time, I used pre-cooked cannellini beans. If you want, you can replace the pre-cooked cannellini beans with 400 g of dried cannellini beans: just cook the beans separately and, at the right time, add them to the vegetable soup (as explained below). Minestra di pane, translated as bread soup, is a traditional Tuscan dish made with day-old stale bread and a mixture of fresh garden vegetables. The recipe has peasant origins and must always incorporate two key ingredients: beans and black cabbage.

Ingredients

1 bunch Black cabbage

1/4 Savoy cabbage

1 Escarole (endive) (or chard)

1 Potatoe

3 Peeled tomatoes

1 Carrot

1 Celery

1 Onion

Thyme

Rosemary

Olive oil

Salt

Black pepper

Vegetable broth (about 2 liters)

800 g Pre-cooked cannellini beans

Stale bread

Preparation

Tie the sprigs of thyme together with the sprig of rosemary so that you have a bunch of herbs. Chop the onion, carrot and celery and brown in extra virgin olive oil. Add the peeled and chopped potato and the bunch of thyme and rosemary and sauté again. Stir in the peeled tomatoes and cook for a few seconds. At this point, add the vegetables cut into pieces (kale, cabbage and escarole or chard). Add the water from the boiled beans, bring to a boil and cook for about 2 hours, over low heat, adding a little broth at a time. After two hours, mash 400 g of beans to obtain a cream and pour them into the vegetable soup. Cook for another 30 minutes, then add 400 g of pre-cooked cannellini beans (whole, not creamy), cover with the broth and cook for another 30 minutes. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. In an earthenware pot, pour a few pieces of stale bread, cover with a few ladles of soup, then continue to layer stale bread and soup until the pot is full. Cover with aluminum foil and let the vegetable soup, bread and beans rest for at least 3 hours, even better if overnight. After the resting time, bring the pot with the Tuscan ribollita to the heat, add a ladle of broth and extra virgin olive oil and cook over low heat for about 20-30 minutes or, in any case, until the Tuscan ribollita is hot. Season again with salt and black pepper to taste. Tuscan ribollita should be served hot.