Tuscan Ribollita - Twice-Cooked Bread and Bean Stew with Black Kale
Ribollita literally means reboiled: the stew is made a day ahead and reheated the next day with stale bread. Only then does it earn the name - before that it is just a vegetable soup.
Why this dish is good for you
Nearly fourteen grams of fibre a portion from three different sources: bean, cabbage and wholemeal bread. That variety matters, because different gut bacteria feed on different kinds of fibre. Bean protein and the grain protein of the bread also complete each other's amino acid profile.
Ingredients
- White beans(weighed dry, soaked overnight - cannellini are the Tuscan variety)250 g
- Kale(in Tuscany this is cavolo nero; calculated here with kale values, as it belongs to the same species)300 g
- Savoy cabbage(in wide strips)250 g
- Tomatoes(diced)300 g
- Wholemeal bread(stale, in slices - fresh bread dissolves into mush)200 g
- Carrots(finely diced)150 g
- Celery(celery sticks, finely diced)150 g
- Onion(finely diced)150 g
- Olive oil(half for the stew, half raw on the plate)50 g
- Garlic15 g
- Salt(add only once the beans are soft)6 g
- Rosemary(one sprig)3 g
- Water1500 ml
Method
- 1
Soak the beans overnight, drain and simmer in fresh unsalted water for 60 to 75 minutes until soft. Puree a third of them and leave the rest whole. Keep the cooking water.
- 2
Sweat onion, carrot and celery gently in half the olive oil for 15 minutes - this trio is called soffritto in Italy and is the foundation of almost every soup.
- 3
Add garlic and rosemary, sweat briefly, then the tomatoes, and cook down for 20 minutes.
- 4
Add the kale and savoy cabbage, pour in the bean cooking water and simmer for 40 minutes until the cabbage is completely soft.
- 5
Stir in the whole and pureed beans, season with salt, take the pot off the heat and leave it overnight.
- 6
The next day layer the bread slices into the pot, bring everything slowly back to the boil and let it stand for 15 minutes until the bread has dissolved. Serve with the raw olive oil.
🍞 Das Brot ist nicht Beilage, sondern Zutat
In Tuscan farmhouse cooking bread was baked without salt and went hard before it went bad. Several dishes grew out of that constraint - ribollita, panzanella, pappa al pomodoro. All three use stale bread as the filling base rather than as a side.
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