The savvy soup called Ribollita

Posted on February 11, 2015 Updated on April 16, 2016

Have you ever looked at vegetable leftovers in your fridge or the seasonal mix in your vegetable boxes and thought: ‘What could I make with this?’. Have you every thrown away cooked vegetable leftovers? If yes this soup is for you. If not the soup is still for you so try it anyway.

In the past month I have been working with Green City Events to deliver the Love Food Hate Waste Cities Campaign in Cardiff through Roath based roadshows and cooking workshops. In this process I have been developing and revisiting recipes that can help people be savvy and healthy.

The lovely soups of Ribollita and Minestrone were my natural first choices because they are very easy to make and they can have as many variations as the people who make them.

Ribollita literally means reboiled in Italian. It is a Tuscan soup that uses leftover cooked vegetable and is eaten with stale toasted or grilled bread. You can make Ribollita with any seasonal vegetable at our disposal but the dominant ingredient should be a mix of greens and you should include some kind of cooked bean.

My Ribollita soup can be easily turned to a Minestrone with the addition of more stock or water and pasta or quinoa. This is a great solution if you have less vegetable or more visitors to feed.

On 7 February 2015 at our first Love Food Hate Waste cooking workshop participants prepared four different versions of Ribollita and Minestrone types of soup using different herbs to flavour it, different grains or pasta and mix of vegetables at their disposal. Why not love food and your leftover vegetable too by trying our soup?

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 celery stick
  300 mixed greens
• 150-200 g left over root vegetable/squash or potato
• 2 carrots (around 160g)
• 4 Garlic cloves
• ½-1 tin chopped tomatoes Or a couple of ripe tomatoes chopped
• 1 can beans drained and washed
• (280g) 50g rice/quinoa Or 100g pasta 2lt stock or boiling water
• Herbs of your choice such as: 10-15 leaves of basil 1 teaspoon oregano Or 2 teaspoons thyme 3 bay leaves Salt & Pepper
• Pecorino or parmesan cheese garnish (optional)

Preparation:

1. Wash and chop all your vegetable and greens.
2. Sauté the onion with a pinch of salt until translucent.
3. Add the garlic and herbs and sauté for a few minutes.
4. Add the chopped tomatoes and sauté for another few minutes.
5. Add the root vegetable or potatoes and carrot and stir fry for a bit.
6. Add the stock and simmer for ten minutes.
7. Add the beans, greens and pasta and simmer for another 10 minutes.
8. If you are using quinoa and rice add at the same time as the stock.
9. Seasons with salt and pepper.

Lia’s Tips: the authentic ribollita uses recooked vegetable which you can add towards the end of the soup. Sage and parsley are another great combination of herbs for this soup. Kale, Cavolo Nero, flower sprouts, brussels sprouts, broccoli stalks and spring greens are some of the delicious leafs that you can add to your soup.