Alessandro Pavoni’s Winter Soup

June 19, 2018

Alessandro Pavoni’s ‘Ribollita Toscana’

Ingredients (serves 8): 

  • 250g dried borlotti beans, or cannellini beans – SOAKED FOR MINIMUM 8 HOURS
  • 50g Good quality Grana padano or Parmasen
  • 250g Tuscan cabbage
  • 250g Savoy cabbage
  • 250g silverbeet (cut off white stalks)
  • 1 celery stalk
  • 1 onion
  • 1 carrot
  • 100g tinned peeled tomatoes
  • 1 potato – diced
  • 1 litre of water
  • Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
  • Salt
  • 150g of stale bread, crusts off, cut into large cubes

Method:

For the soup:

  1. Soak the dried beans for a minimum of 8 hours in the fridge, in a large bowl, with at least 3 times the volume of water.
  2. Wash and cut into thin strips the Tuscan cabbage, Savoy cabbage and silverbeet
  3. Dice the celery, carrot and onion

Saute to start:

  1. Take the diced celery, carrot and onion and put into the pressure cooker with 50ml of EVOO on SAUTE mode for 10 minutes

Pressure Cooking:

  1. Add to sautéed mix the tomatoes, diced potato, soaked beans, 4 large pinches of salt and 1L of water
  2. Set the pressure cooker to Medium for 15 minutes
  3. After the 15 minutes, open the pressure cooker, mix and stir through the soup. Taste and season if necessary
  4. Add the stale bread and stir through
  5. Rest this soup overnight. (NB: If you are using fresh bread, you only need to rest the soup for 3 hours)

Serving:

  1. The next day, take the soup and reheat it to the boil (This is why they call is “Ribollita” which translates to “re-boiled”.)
  2. Hand Whisk
  3. Serve topped with the grated parmasen and a drizzle of EVOO

Alessandro Pavoni is the Executive Chef of Ormeggio at The Spit, Via Alta, Chiosco by Ormeggio & Sotto Sopra