I’m looking out the window and watching the snow and thinking that this would be the perfect time to talk soup. Soup is one of my favourite things to eat when the thermometer starts to head south. Soup is easy to make and rarely requires crazy ingredients. A bonus is that depending on the type of soup you can use it as an excuse to clean out your fridge.
For whatever reason the other day I had a crazy craving for Tuscan Bean Soup. I don’t even remember what prompted that craving but I just had to have the soup. My best memories of Tuscan Bean Soup are from when I interned at NBC. For almost two years I spent about 3 days at NBC during school semesters. This of course meant that I became intimate with the various lunch options in and around Rockefeller Centre.
One of my favourite lunch spots was Cucina & Co. in the basement of 30 Rock. Cucina is a sort of Mediterranean marketplace where you can grab lunch or sit down. I’d often go there for soup and these really good white chocolate and cherry cookies. I could be making up the white chocolate part but these cookies definitely had sour cherries in them. SO GOOD.
I don’t really have a flavour memory for the Cucina & Co. bean soup but I have a warm and fuzzy feeling in my heart about it. So I decided to try to make some Tuscan bean soup that would recreate that warm and fuzzy feeling. I started scouring my cookbooks looking for a recipe and settled on Mario Batali’s Ribollita recipe on the Food Network site and also in his book .
The soup was easy enough to make although there was a fair amount of chopping involved. I used kale instead of black cabbage. The results were okay to good. I found the flavours a bit flat and the soup a bit thinner than I would’ve liked. This was easily remedied by finishing each bowl of soup with a splash of olive oil. Next time I’d probably start the soup with some sauteed bacon to add another layer of flavours. While generally good I think I’ll continue on my search for the perfect Tuscan Bean Soup.
This soup is definitely vegetarian and can be vegan if you omit the sprinkling of cheese.
Ribollita
Ingredients
* 3/4 cup dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight and drained
* 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* 1 Spanish onion, thinly sliced
* 1 leek, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced
* 1 carrot, cut into 1/4-inch dice
* 1 celery stalk, cut into 1/4-inch dice
* 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced, plus 1 whole garlic clove
* 2 sprigs fresh thyme
* 1 bay leaf
* 1 pound chopped cavolo nero (black cabbage), roughly chopped
* 1/2 pound chopped white cabbage, roughly chopped
* 2 scant tablespoons tomato paste
* 3 cups water
* 4 (1/2-inch) slices Italian peasant bread
* Salt and freshly ground black pepper
* Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
Directions
Place the presoaked cannellini beans in a medium stockpot. Add water to just cover the beans and bring the water to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat and let the beans simmer until tender, about 1 hour.
In a 12-inch saute pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Add the onion, leek, carrot, celery, sliced garlic, and herbs. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the black and white cabbages and cook until the cabbage has softened and the flavors have blended, about 10 minutes. Salt and pepper, to taste. Remove the sprigs of rosemary and thyme and the bay leaf. Add the tomato paste, and stir until the tomato paste is well distributed throughout the vegetable mixture.
Preheat the grill or broiler.
Add the vegetable mixture to the pot with beans and water and let simmer until the flavors are well blended, about 30 minutes more. When the soup is close to being done, toast or grill the bread until both sides are browned. Cut the remaining garlic clove in half, and rub the toasted bread with the cut end of the garlic. Discard the garlic.
Serve the soup hot in 4 warmed bowls with the garlic bruschetta on the side. Garnish with a sprinkling of Parmigiano, to taste.
(Recipe via Food Network)
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