5 Tuscan soups for winter evenings

One of the most well-known Tuscan dishes in the world is undoubtedly the ribollita. A poor, traditional dish that used to be cooked with leftovers from previous days.
Over the years the recipe has also been revisited in a gourmet version, but the base remains the same: stale bread, black cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes and cannellini beans.
This is a fragrant, slow-cooking soup that should be prepared well in advance: once the vegetable broth has been made and the bread added, the soup must be reheated: from this step comes the name “ribollita”, that in Italian means boiled twice.
To cook the ribollita in the best way, you need to soak the dried beans overnight, plus the first cooking of the soup takes a couple of hours.
Just a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil is enough to make it perfect and ready to enjoy!

Typical of the Lucca area, the Frantoiana soup is a dish made with legumes and vegetables, flavored with extra virgin olive oil, strictly from Tuscany. The simple and traditional ingredients give this recipe a genuine and timeless flavor.
What makes this soup really special, however, is the use of mountain herbs, such as blue sow thistles, borage and chives.
Preparing this dish at home is very simple, but again it takes some time, both for cooking the legumes and for the vegetable broth.

The Caldaro is a fish soup typical of the Argentario.
It originated as a poor dish of fishermen returning from days at sea who, using the catch of the day, cooked this soup inside a large pot called, precisely, caldaro.
Today this recipe has many variations that depend mainly on the availability of fish on the market: the base remains the same, but shellfish are usually added. A handful of fresh parsley and a little chili pepper make this dish truly delicious.

Acquacotta maremmana is also a very poor recipe, born from the imagination of shepherds and herdsmen who traveled through the Maremma with their livestock: while grazing, they would look for herbs to boil and combine them with sautéed bacon or lard, onion and other seasonal herbs.
Over the years acquacotta has become a soup with vegetables that change from season to season, enriched with slices of toasted bread, eggs and pecorino cheese.
The secret of the dish is a long cooking time: preparing it at home is simple, just use seasonal ingredients and let your imagination guide you!

Let’s conclude with another poor soup, typical of the peasant tradition: the black cabbage Farinata.
Preparing this soup is very simple, you need black cabbage, cannellini beans and corn flour; this dish was once eaten not only as soon as it was prepared, but also in the following days, cut into slices and toasted on the grill.