Tag Archives: kale

Ribollita, or Italian Vegetable Soup.

Posted by alicemwilkinson in Recipe and tagged with , , , , , , ,

This soup makes Minestrone look like the runt of the litter.  Ribollita is the older, wiser, ruggedly handsome older brother of Minestrone.  Minestrone doesn’t stand a chance in an arm wrestle.

Ribollita is an Italian vegetable soup made with beans and, happily for me, no pasta.  It’s a great gluten-free meal because it doesn’t feel gluten-free, it just is.  In fact, I’ve been making this soup for a while now, long before I knew I was coeliac; in fact I got the recipe from one of the first non-baking recipe books I ever owned.  Just before, or shortly after, I started university my Mum gave me this little recipe book, called Hearty Soups (I’ve just had a look on Amazon and it seems you can only buy it in America, which is annoying, but it’s only one cent) and, though I’ve tried some of the other recipes, it’s the one for Robillita that I always return to.

It’s hard to put into words how great this soup is, partly, I think, because it seems to be a different beast every time I make it.  As a soup, it is in it’s nature to be adaptable, allowing me to add, for example, some kale if I’m feeling the need for superfoods, or to add more beans for a thicker texture.  However, there are some things about this soup which are always the same: the intense sweetness of the vegetables, particularly the carrots, that have been cooked slowly for a long time; the deeply appealing savouriness which comes from adding a Parmesan rind; the surprising heat from the chilli flakes, which I always forget that I’ve added.  And then, the texture, which is, for me, the reason why this soup is so superior to Minestrone (which will forever be, in my mind, the fake red, canned tomato flavoured water with floating “pasta” and one cube of courgette, that passed itself off as soup in the school canteen): Ribollita is thickened by pureeing a couple of ladles of soup (brilliant, actually, for coeliacs, as it means you don’t have to thicken with flour) which somehow makes me feel like I am eating an ancient food, something that has been made and eaten for centuries and not changed.

This soup is definitely better if cooked the day before you wish to eat it but this is not obligatory.  Do try to give it as much time as you can though: this is a slow cook and you have to embrace it.  If you try to rush it, you’ll get annoyed and it won’t taste nice.  So make it on a Sunday and reheat it on Monday night when you need some comforting (and then take it as lunch for the next few days: this recipe make a lot).  If you love it, it will love you right back.

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To serve 6:

1 onion, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

4 celery sticks, chopped

1 leek, chopped

3 courgettes, chopped

4 garlic cloves, crushed/chopped

1 tsp chilli flakes

3 sprigs worth of rosemary, leaves removed from stalks, chopped

3 sprigs of thyme, leaves removed from stalks

1 jar tomato passata (usually about 500ml)

2 knorr chicken stock pots (gluten-free, which is why I use them)

2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed well

1 Parmesan rind

1 bag of cavolo nero, stalks removed then chopped/torn

1 bag of kale, stalks removed then chopped/torn (optional)

Start by heating some olive oil in a very large sauce or stock pan.  On a medium-low heat, cook the chopped onion, carrot and celery for about 5 minutes.

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Then add the chopped courgette and leek.  Cook for 5 minutes.

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Add the chopped garlic, chilli and chopped herbs (you could also use chopped sage) and fry on a medium-high heat for a few minutes, stirring to prevent anything from catching on the bottom of the pan.

Add the tomato passata, the stock pots (you can also use vegetable stock) and the drained and rinsed beans.  Fill the tomato passata jar with cold water and empty it into the soup, so as the vegetables and beans are well covered.

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Add the Parmesan rind.

Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 1hr 30mins, at least.

Turn off the soup and allow to cool.  Then either mash or puree, in a food processor, 3 ladles worth of soup; return the puree to the rest of the soup and stir to combine.

Reheat the soup and add the cavolo nero and kale, if using.  Allow to cook for 1hr.  Turn off and reheat when needed.

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NB: there’s a lot of stock in this soup, plus a Parmesan rind so go easy on the salt.  I wouldn’t add salt until near the end of cooking, once you’ve tasted the salt to confirm it needs it.

Courgette and Bacon Pasta… Without the Pasta.

Posted by alicemwilkinson in Recipe, Travel and tagged with , , ,

Having just returned from a post-Christmas, pre-January-panic holiday in Paris, I’m feeling a little starved of vegetables.  They don’t really serve vegetables as part of a main dish there, nor can you order vegetables as a side dish (or maybe you can but it’s not on the menu), so after three days and four nights of eating omelettes, roast meat and mashed potatoes, Sebastian and I have been feeling a little heavy.  Inevitably, my diet whilst in Paris was less varied than it would be home; rather than trying to explain what coeliac disease is to every blank -faced waiter, I opted to use my chef training and general restaurant-going experience to make educated guesses about the potential wheat content of my potential dinner (I chose roasted meat instead of anything pan fried which might have been coated in flour first; chose the salmon tartar instead of the fish bisque, a jus rather than a thickened sauce, etc).  This went well, but it did mean that I ate a lot of salmon sashimi at lunch times (Paris: great place for sushi… Who knew?) and a lot of red meat at dinner and not much else.

I returned a couple of days ago, at dinner time. Of course, the fridge was devoid of food so I nipped out to the shops to buy something I could make quickly.  Before, I would’ve immediately opted for pasta, which is obviously off the menu now.  I was thinking wistfully about my courgette and bacon pasta dish as I stood in the grocers staring at kale, when it occurred to me that this celebrity vegetable, crisped in the oven, would be a great replacement for pasta, in this instance anyway.

And I was right!  I’d bought extra courgettes (about four large ones) than I usually would but otherwise the quantities stayed exactly the same as they would have been were I making it as a pasta dish with actual pasta (so feel free to ignore the kale part and use corn pasta or whatever in it’s place).  First I fried six rashers of streaky bacon on a very low heat: this is how you get it to go really crispy.  Once they were dark brown and dramatically shrunken I drained the rashers on kitchen roll.  I turned up the heat on my frying pan a little and fried about four cloves of sliced garlic and half a chopped, fresh, red chilli (you can use more or less chilli depending on your tastes) until the garlic just started to colour.  Then I added my courgettes which I had washed, halved lengthways and sliced into semi-circles.

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I fired the courgettes on a high heat until they were cooked through and golden brown.

Then to the kale:  I spread the kale out evenly in a large roasting pan (if you pile it in, it was go soft, not crispy) and lightly drizzled olive oil over it with plenty of salt and pepper.  I cooked the kale for literally three minutes in an oven heated to 180°C.  And this is what I got…

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So that was it.  I added lots of freshly grated Parmesan and the crispy bacon to the courgettes and then topped my bowl of kale with the sauce.

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I’d made Sebastian pasta, which was once my favourite thing, but as he sat next to me, enjoying his supper, I wasn’t the slightest bit jealous!  Whatever, eat your pasta, I have kale crisps and they are excellent.