In cold days there is nothing better than a delicious soup that warms up from the inside, and we aren’t speaking about a normal soup but about Tuscan Ribollita, a unique recipe typical of a region in Italy, Tuscany. In this dish you can have together the antioxidant and anti cancer properties of two types of cabbage, the black kale and the savoy cabbage, the proteins of cannellini beans, the fatty acids of extra virgin olive oil and the slow-release carbohydrates of whole grain bread. But this soup is also more, it is scent, it is taste and is prepared with a lot of other vegetables that make it a true healthy dish. The preparation takes some time but it is worth it. In any case, if you want to speed up the preparation, you can use canned cannellini beans, pay attention that there aren’t any added salt or sugars. There is just an adjustment of the recipe in this case, you should replace the cooking broth of the legumes with another 1,5 l of water.
Ingredients for 6 persons
300 g of dry cannellini beans
2 bunches of black kale
1/2 savoy cabbage
2 bunches of Swiss chards
2 potatoes
2 carrots
2 sticks of celery
2 onions
1 tablespoon of canned tomatoes
Extra virgin olive oil
Whole grain stale bread
Black pepper
Sea salt
Soak the cannellini beans for a night, the next day drain and rinse them, put the beans in a pot and cover with 2 liters of cold water. Bring to boil and cook on a low heat and covered for two hours or until the legumes are tender. Chop up the onion, put apart the other onion, and sauté it in a large pan with a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and two tablespoons of water, add also the canned tomatoes diluted in a glass of hot water. Slice the carrots and the sticks of celery, peel and cut into pieces the potatoes. Put all these vegetables in the pan. Cook for some minutes then pour a liter of water and the cooking broth of the legumes. Crush now about 2/3 of the cannellini beans and add the mashed beans to the soup, the other cannellini beans remain apart. Cut into strips the savoy cabbage, the black kale and the Swiss chards and add these ingredients to the soup, go on cooking for about an hour. Add also the other beans, season with some fine ground sea salt and black pepper. Cook for other 10 minutes. Slice the onion and in a large bowl prepare the soup. You should alternate layers of bread, a spread of extra virgin olive oil, soup, raw onion slices and again oil, go on in this way until you finish all the ingredients. Let the soup rest for ten minutes and then serve this beauty!
