Ribollita - the ultimate winter soup

A specialty of Tuscany, this hearty bean and vegetable soup is served all over Florence in the winter. To call it a soup though is actually a bit of a misnomer. While it starts out as a soup, it gets thickened with bread before serving and by the time it's brought to the table it's actually more like a stew. A delicious, stick to your ribs, warm you right up from the inside stew.

.

I gorged myself on sampled ribollita in many different restaurants during our recent trip to Florence (and in fact ran out to buy a Tuscan cookbook to be sure I could recreate my new favorite winter food once I returned home). Out of all the ones I tasted the hands-down winner had to be the one served at Trattoria Mario. That particular one is so well known that it's recipe is posted on the website of an Italian cooking school. Their recipe is the one I used to make the dish you see above (with the substitution of swiss chard for the unavailable in Israel black cabbage).

I couldn't wait to try it out, and now that the weather is cooling off a bit and making it possible to think about soups again I did. I'm happy to say that it was every bit as good as the one I got in the restaurant, though I must admit that the atomosphere was somewhat lacking... I should have brought in a few strangers to share my table and added some house wine and a huge amount of noise to get the full effect.

Buon appetito!