Alkaline Recipe #64: Ribollita Vegetable Bean Soup

In these lingering arctic temperatures and snowy conditions, this is the perfect soup to warm you up nicely!

Ribollita is a famous soup from Tuscany in Italy and like many dishes from this region it has got peasant origins. The word Ribollita literally means “reboiled”, as it was originally made by reheating the leftover vegetable soup from the previous day.

The core ingredients of this Tuscan soup are green vegetables and beans, which make this soup not only delicious but also highly nutritious and alkaline!

Enjoy!

Ribollita Vegetable Bean Soup

Serves 4 as a starter
Serves 2 as a main course

Ingredients

250g of green vegetables (a selection of green cabbage, spinach and rucola works very well)
1 carrot
1 celery stick
2-3 garlic cloves
60g of sprouted bread from the day before (or healthiest alternative)
1-2 rosemary twigs
4 tbsp olive oil
1 litre of yeast-free vegetable stock (organic if possible)
1 can of precooked white beans
1 red onion
Celtic Sea Salt or Himalayan Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

Wash the green vegtables and roughly cut them into pieces. Peel the carrot, wash the celery stick and cut both into strips and then small cube-size pieces. Peel the garlic cloves and cut them into very fine pieces. Cut the sprouted bread into cube-size pieces. Wash the rosemary twigs, take off the needles and cut them into small pieces.

Gently heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a large pot. Add the carrot, celery and garlic and fry them very briefly in the oil. Stir in the rest of the vegetables together with the rosemary.

Add the bread and stock and let it heat up. Reduce the heat to medium level and cover the pot with a lid. Cook the vegetables for about 15 minutes until they start to soften.

Drain the canned beans in a colander and let cold water run over them, until all the liquid from the can has fully drained. Add the beans to the soup and let it cook for about 25 minutes whilst stirring occasionally. The aim is for the soup to thicken! Try the soup and season to taste with salt and pepper.

You have two options now: either leave the soup to cool down and gently reheat the next day as the Italians do or peel the onion straight after cooking, halve and cut it into very fine strips. Put the onion strips onto a small plate and put the pot of soup straight onto the dinning table. Take as much Ribollita as you like, sprinkle over the onion strips and drizzle over some olive oil.

Buon appetito!