Zuppa's on!

Tonight, I was in the kitchen for quite awhile, but it was well worth it! I made what Jamie Oliver calls "La Mia Ribollita Preferita," his favorite ribollita. This is a Tuscan soup whose name literally means "reboiled." According to Wikipedia, Italians used to make this soup by reheating leftover minestrone soup from a previous meal.

The cannellini beans, which I bought dried, needed to soak in a bowl of water overnight. Before I went to sleep yesterday, I placed my dried beans in a bowl, filled it with water and covered it with some saran wrap. When I got home from work today, the first thing I did was place those beans on the stove in a large pot with some water, a squished tomato, a bay leaf and a small, peeled potato. Dried beans need to cook for about an hour, whereas fresh ones only need about 25 minutes, so I knew I had an hour of simmering ahead of me.



Then I got my mise en place together!



While my beans were cooking, I finely chopped 2 red onions, 2 carrots, 3 stalks of celery and 3 garlic cloves. I placed them all in a pot with some olive oil, a pinch of ground fennel seeds and a little bit of dried red chili, and cooked them on a medium heat, for about 20 minutes. I allowed the mire poix to sweat, without browning. Meanwhile, I cubed some bread and thinly sliced a beautiful bunch of kale.

Once the 20 minutes had passed, I added a can of plum tomatoes and allowed it to simmer for a few more minutes. Once it had simmered, I added the beans from the other pot, after removing the tomato, bay leaf and potato. You want to reserve the cooking liquid to actually make the soup (but I found that if you don't have enough, it works to add some hot water from the sink as well - just make sure you season).



Once the mixture came back to a boil, I added my sliced kale and it immediately started to wilt into the soup. Doesn't it look bright and delicious!?



I softened some cubed semi-stale bread with some of the cooking liquid and then added that to the soup as well. I made this loaf of French Herb bread this weekend, so it wasn't exactly crunchy-stale but it worked for this situation. The bread really thickens up the soup and gives it this fantastic texture!



I continued cooking the soup for another 30 minutes, adding a little more water to loosen it up a bit along the way. It was nice and thick, and the recipe called for 4 big glugs of extra virgin olive oil to top it all off. This gave the soup a lovely sheen and a great silky texture. So comforting on a cold day like this one!



I served the soup with a great panzanella salad, but more on that tomorrow - I figured I'd split this evening's cooking into two posts for two reasons. One, I was racing around the kitchen this evening - these two recipes were pretty labor intensive, and two, tomorrow's my late night at the gym so we'll be eating leftovers for sure!

Buona notte il amichi miei!

Worth the Wait

I started cooking dinner around noon today! But don't be fooled by the amount of time it took to make this meal - it's totally simple, I promise! It's actually an extremely hands-off recipe, which makes for a great lazy Sunday in a house that smells too good to eat! :)

Chef Jamie Oliver describes this dish, Peposo (The Famous Hunter's Peppery Beef Stew) as a "powerful old Tuscan dish." This stew can be cooked overnight in a 275 degree oven - for up to 8 hours (like many Italians do) - or, like I did, it can be cooked for 6 hours in a 300 degree oven. My dish actually took more like 4 1/2 since I didn't have as much meat...which was lucky for me because I don't think I could have taken it a second longer. Seriously, the house smelled SO good!

First, let's take a look at my mise en place.



The only prep work for this was cutting the meat off the bone. The recipe calls for 5 1/2 pounds of beef shin (or shank) but the meat is going to get so flaky and succulent over the next 6 hours that its just easier to cut it off the bone now. There's quite a bit of fat on these pieces but I didn't remove all of it - just the large chunks. The fat flavors the juice that the beef cooks in so you don't want to get rid of all of it. Also, check out the marrow in the middle of the bones - you totally want that in there, too. The marrow holds so much flavor and will fall out of the bones as they cook, adding to the delicious juices as well. When you purchase the beef shin (shank), they will look like this:



Because the recipe calls for 5 1/2 pounds, I had to buy a few of these packages. I actually think I purchased more like 4 - 4 1/2 pounds since it really is only for the two of us...plus some leftovers. I figured having the exact amount of meat wasn't necessary - the recipe says it serves 10! Aside from the meat, I had 2 bottles worth of Chianti (I just bought a large bottle that is the equivalent of 2 regular bottles), 20 cloves of garlic, 5 rosemary sprigs, 2 bay leaves and loads of salt and pepper.

So, once I had my mise en place in place, I got out a large dish that would just hold all of my ingredients.  You don't want to have a lot of empty space in the pot so make sure you choose wisely. I placed a layer of the pieces of beef in the bottom of the pot and topped it with some of the garlic cloves, a couple of rosemary sprigs, a nice sprinkling of salt, and a bunch of freshly ground pepper (like, a lot of pepper - it IS pepper stew after all). Continue layering like this until you've used up the pieces of beef.

Second layer

Once all the beef was used up, and I had thrown in all 20 garlic cloves, along with rest of the rosemary, I poured the Chianti into the pot, to the brim. You want everything to be covered in liquid. I didn't end up using the entire amount, but if you do run out of wine, you can finish filling the pot with water. Add the bones and the bay leaves for flavor and bring it to a boil on the stove.



Once it came to a boil, I covered the pot with a double layer of aluminum foil and put it in my preheated oven. You want to keep all the moisture inside the pot. And then...you find something to do for the next 6 hours! :) I baked a loaf of bread, did some laundry, watched a Law and Order: SVU marathon, cleaned the kitchen, and changed the sheets. All in all, a pretty successful day, I'd say.

With an hour and a half left on the timer, I checked my pot to see how the meat was coming along, and was happy to find that it was pretty much done. I left it in for a little longer while I made my sides. I decided to saute some potatoes and kale to go with this stew, so I sliced up the potatoes and threw them in a cast iron pan with a little butter, salt and pepper. When the potatoes were browned and almost cooked through, I threw the kale on top and tossed until the greens had wilted.



Once the potatoes and kale were ready, then I turned off the oven and pulled my stew out. The flavors had melded together so well and the marrow had fallen out of the bones. I pulled the bones and bay leaves out of the liquid, along with the rosemary sprig branches.



And finally, it was time to plate this hearty meal. I broke the meat apart with a fork quickly, and smooshed the garlic cloves up a little bit, and voila, a lovely hearty Italian meal for us and lots of leftovers for the week! I drizzled some of the juices on top just before serving.



This meal was very comforting and homey. I love enjoying a meal that has made my house smell so good all day because it's like finally eating something for which you've had a craving for a long time. It can also be served as an energizing brunch, scooped over a hearty slice of hot, toasted bruschetta, like it was traditionally given to hunters after a morning spent in the woods. Don't be put off by all the pepper because while I used quite a bit, it wasn't extremely potent after the 4 1/2 hours in the oven. I think I would probably use MORE pepper next time, but you can definitely manage the amount of spice that you'd like in your stew! Happy Sunday!