Everyone remembers the fairy tale about the wooden boy Pinocchio, who was so hungry that he decided to look into the painted cauldron? Thanks to the hole in the canvas, he and Papa Carlo finally have real food, and not just a canvas ...
Tell me, who didn’t worry about these poor fellows?
And admit Tver, have you ever wondered what could have been cooked in Papa Carlo's pot?
I recently decided to ask this question - actually very interesting.
Poor food, in fact, most often consisted of chowder. But the stews differed from country to country, and even in one country, but in different regions, they were different.
Pope Carlo was named Tolstoy in honor of the author of "The Adventures of Pinocchio" - Carlo Collodi. So we can assume that he associated him with him. And Carlo Collodi (Lorenzini) was born on November 24, 1826 in Florence.
So we send our dad Carlo to live in Florence.
Florence is Tuscany.
And Tuscany is, of course, ribolitta - a poor man's soup made of bread and vegetables. Brewed twice it is called, due to the fact that most often it is yesterday's minestrone with the addition of stale bread. However, there is also an "independent" recipe for ribolitta.
We will need:
A glass of dry white beans
A little pork skin
200 grams of black cabbage (Tuscan kale). We have it a rarity, according to experts, it can be replaced with beet leaves (more authentic) or broccoli (more usual)
A couple of onions
A couple of carrots
Potato
A couple of cloves of garlic
A couple of tomatoes
Leek stalk if present
A little celery
A liter of liquid - water or broth
Several slices of stale bread
· Rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper, olive oil - to taste and as available.
How we cook:
We wash and soak the beans in the evening
We wash the cale, remove the large central vein, cut into large pieces. You can do the same with young beet tops. But broccoli, I suspect should be thrown at the end of cooking.
· Peel the tomatoes, peel and chop the onion and a clove of garlic. Cut celery, carrots, tomatoes and potatoes into cubes (peeling what has not been peeled), leek into half rings.
Pour a little olive oil into a saucepan and sauté chopped onion and garlic on it for a minute (on low Add greens and vegetables, heat for a few more minutes, stirring often, then add the beans and pour everything it's liquid.
· If your pork skin is raw - just peel it and cut it into small pieces, and send it to the soup.
· Cook for about an hour, then add the kale, or beet tops and (if you have smoked meat skin) the skin. If your skin is raw, it has already been thrown, remember, right?
Then we simmer for three hours, at the very end we add the remaining garlic and herbs, and broccoli, if the kale was replaced with it. And then - broken stale bread.
· By the way: the beans can be taken out an hour after boiling and partially punctured with a blender. Whether the poor did this in past centuries, I do not know, but with this you will achieve a creamy thickness of the soup.
Papa Carlo's dish is done.