Ribollita for the soul

My family's 'chicken soup'

I write to you from under a blanket. I am in recovery mode. Recovering from a long and not-fun winter cold, but also recovering from the all-encompassing caring that’s needed when your kids are also ill. Many times over the last ten days I have thought of those for whom caring is not something that lasts a couple of weeks, but is every single day. The selflessness of those who care day in and day out is really something. If that's you then I take my hat off to you and I send you my love.

It will come as a surprise to no one that, how I care, is with food. After a couple of weeks of eating not that much, we are all really hungry again. We need feeding on a soul level and when that's what's called for - this is Ribollita what I make.

This Ribollita is my family's ‘chicken soup’. It's what we make in the cold months when we need food that we can spoon from a bowl that will bring us back to life. Ribollita is a Tuscan soupy-stew, it means reboiled. It's made in as many different ways as there are cooks. While the word reboiled is not the most appetising, it's really a reference to a culinary trick we all know to be true. That heating up a soup, curry, or lasagne the day after it was cooked is almost always more delicious than eating it right out of the pan the day it was made.

Originally ribollita was a way of using up leftover white beans, stale bread and odds and ends of vegetables. While it is absolutely a soup that's a great vehicle for leftovers, it's something I make quite intentionally.

This is a recipe I have been making for 25 years and it's one I very rarely deviate from unless it's to use up some not-on-the-ingredients-list vegetables that I have hanging around. The recipe below is the one I make over and over - but it is a pretty flexible soup. In place of onions, leeks or shallots would work, instead of potato, I have used sweet potato or pumpkin, if you don’t have cavolo nero then you could use kale or savoy cabbage.

There are a few non-negotiable things that, to me, make a good ribollita and these are the things I always stick to and I will stand firm on.

1. Celery - Ribollita starts, as so many good things do, with a soffritto - onion, carrot, celery. But the celery is key here. I often use an entire head of it, the salty savouriness it brings is a foil for the tomatoes, bread and oil, and it’s absolutely needed. Don’t skip it.

2. Tomatoes - it's winter so we are using tinned here. Buy the best you can, I’d recommend whole plum. (A useful UK guide on buying tinned tomatoes is linked below) Whatever tomatoes you use here though, the key is to cook them out. After softening the soffritto I add them with the potatoes without any other liquid and and cook them for about 10 minutes to sweeten them and to take away the rawness. I’ve tried skipping this step and my ribollita was nowhere near as good.

3. Parmesan rind - I keep the rinds of Parmesan in my freezer for this soup. Adding the whole rind while the soup cooks adds a deep umami richness and it is the soul of this soup. If you are vegetarian and don’t eat regular Parmesan (which has animal rennet) then I recommend Old Winchester, a British cheese with a similar vibe, you can use the rind in the same way.

4. Cavolo nero - While you can use kale or cabbage if you must, cavolo nero really makes this. There is something that happens when cavolo mixes with good oil, tomatoes and bread that is unmatched and takes me back to Tuscany spoonful by spoonful. When you add it to the pan it will look like a lot of cavolo and you will wonder if its going to fit. But trust me, pile it high on top of your pan and it will obligingly wilt down as greens love to do.

5. Beans - in the good old days you’d use the end of a pan of home-cooked beans here. More often I use jarred white beans as I always have them on hand. I am a broken record when it comes to singing the praises of jarred white beans, which I have found to be always tastier, better cooked and seasoned more carefully. Tinned will of course work too.

6. The bread lid - to finish the soup you add a layer of bread to cover the top. Laying a lid of slices of day-old bread over the top of your pan of soup might, if you’ve not done it before, seem a wild thing to do. I assure you it is not. The bread softens and melts into the soup, thickening it and taking on the flavours in the most brilliant way. Traditionally you’d use bread that's a couple of days old. Good country style or sourdough is important here - it’s the heart of this soup.

7. Olive oil - This soup uses a lot of olive oil. I”ve been fairly conservative with the amount in the recipe and I am sure I add a good amount more to the top before resting the soup, and then more on each bowl. It’s what makes this soup creamy and rich. A great-tasting (to you) and fresh (olive oil goes bad quite quickly) extra virgin oil is what you need - grassy, buttery and peppery.

8. Resting - after you laying over the bread lid and the olive oil, I encourage you to rest the soup for as long as you have - overnight is fantastic but just 20 minutes will mean the bread softens and the flavours come together - try not to skip this step.

This soupy stew has revived me and my family more times than I can count. It's what we eat weekly from January to March. I hope my kids will come to love it in a ‘chicken soup’ kind of way, something reliable, ever-present, delicious. Something that means someone cares.

My ribollita recipe