Tuscany’s Twice-Cooked Soup
It gets better the next day, but you won’t want to wait
To the english-speaking mind, Italian is such a lyrical language, it can be comedic how matter-of-fact Italians are when it comes to naming foods. Tuscans seem particularly adept at this. Biscotti, for example. A delicious example of crunchy-meets-barely chewy that begs to be dunked in coffee or sweet vin santo wine. The translation?
Twice-baked.
Likewise, acquacotta, a rich and hearty soup of tomatoes, bread and herbs topped with runny eggs that spill into and enrich the broth. The meaning? Cooked water.
And don’t even get me started on panzanella, that marvelous marriage of tomatoes, bread and herbs that screams summer. In English? Washed bread. Doesn’t that just set your heart pitter-pattering?
The romance somehow seems lost in translation. Which remains true for the ribollita that cookbook author Giulia Scarpaleggia taught me the day I pondered this in her sunny Tuscan kitchen, which opened to the courtyard of the idyllic home her father and grandmother were born in and still live in with her today. Talk about romance.
The dish is a hearty soup of white beans—some pureed, some whole—with leeks, carrots, celery, cabbage, kale and garlic, all partnered with toasted bread and thickened by some of the starchy liquid in which the beans were cooked. It is rich and robust and light and vegetal. Care to guess the translation?
Reboiled.
Sarcasm aside, there is a glorious utility to the language that in each case reflects not just the simplicity of the cooking, but also of the ingredients themselves, even the cuisine writ large. As the names suggest, here nothing is wasted and everything is repurposed. “Tuscan cooking has a lot of respect for leftovers and vegetables,” Scarpaleggia says.
That ribollita is no exception. The name references the tradition of cooking the dish one day, but only eating it the next, at which point it is effectively reboiled, becoming thicker and heartier. A nod to that universal understanding that soups and stews so often are so much better the next day.
Across Tuscany, traditions for making this classic vary dramatically. In some parts, the thicker the ribollita, the better. “In fact, in Florence they spread it over a baking sheet and bake it until you can almost cut it,” Scarpaleggia says.
Her own version—which includes the Florentine use of thyme to season it—skews lighter and more tender but still delivers big flavor. Her use of a little pancetta helps on that front. Same for the garlic, tomato paste and—of course, because this is Tuscany, after all—a finishing drizzle of peppery extra-virgin olive oil. The result is so much more flavorful than the simple ingredients suggest.
The second day is when the bread is added, stirred in until it breaks down, almost emulsifying the broth. In that way, it’s similar to Tunisian lablabi, another bean and vegetable soup into which bread is stirred until it softens.
But as with lablabi, we preferred the bread crispy, so in our version we resist the urge to stir it in. The crunchy-chewy texture perfectly contrasts tender beans and greens.
We also found it flavorful enough to skip the 24-hour wait. Then again, there’s nothing wrong with making a double batch just to ensure you can enjoy it reboiled tomorrow.
