RIBOLLITA (1/08)

I think the Italians are just brilliant, when it comes to food. My niece Stephanie gave me a gorgeous Under the Tuscan Sun calendar for Christmas, which included a few of Frances Mayes' recipes. This week I tried her version of minestrone. It's a fairly basic soup that starts with the sofrito (sauteed onions, carrots and celery), then you add chicken broth, canned tomatoes, chard and fresh herbs, a cup of wine, and the heel from your chunk of parmigiano. After it has simmered for a while, you throw in some cooked potatoes and cannelini beans. Absolutely delicious. But wait - there's more!

Now comes the brilliant part. On the second day, when you reheat it, you tear up a chunk of stale ciabatta or whatever, and toss the pieces into the soup, then it becomes Ribollita (which means re-boiled). The bread acts as a thickening agent, the soup becomes a yummy stew, and you are saved from wasting that stale bread. Pure genius. I once made Giada De Laurentiis' version of Ribollita, but instead of tearing the bread into the soup, she made little individual ciabatta toasts with melted cheese on them, put one in the bottom of each bowl, then ladled the soup in on top of them. Or you could even throw a bit of uncooked pasta into the soup when you reheated it.

Now, even if I could change it up into four different soups, I still wouldn't want to eat it four days in a row. Fortunately, soup freezes better than most anything else, without losing flavor, so if you made a big batch, divided it into four different freezer containers, and pulled out one each week? Brilliant. Just brilliant.