Zuppa di Cavolo Nero – Soup with black Cabbage
This is a vegetable soup that was made at least once a week mostly in the winter time because that is when you could find the main ingredient, Cavolo Nero ( a dark long leaf cabbage that grows in the winter ). The other ingredients are so many and varied that it needs time and patient to explain this recipe, but the outcome of the dish is so tasty that once all the ingredients are in the pot and you start to smell the odour emanated you forget all the work. It resembles the vegetable soup that you can taste in any restaurant in Florence, but as we say in Lucca the people from Florence have always tried to copy us in everything but with a very bad result. Just look at the walls they built around the city. You will say what wall?. See, there is practically no trace left of them, but if you come to Lucca they are still there, magnificent and strong as the day they where finished four hundred years ago.
The same type of attention that was given in building the walls, to secure the city from all sorts of invaders, such as the city of Pisa, the same attention was given in keeping the recipe for “Zuppa di Cavolo Nero “ as original as could possibly be.
Like I said above, you made Zuppa once a week because it gave you the basis for many other dishes, you just need to add corn flower to the leftover zuppa broth and there you had another delicious dish called Farinata and if you still have some left over you just fry the Farinata with good virgin olive oil ( the oil from our hills ) and you get another delicious dish that we simply call Farinata Fritta.
This is another of Zita`s good, healthy and fulfilling dish. The fulfilling part was not to be underestimated in Zita`s times when a days work in the fields started at sun up and ended at sun down and if you had five growing children to feed.
- The day before you wanted to make Zuppa di Cavolo Nero you had to make a bean soup.
- You boil ½ pound Borlotti beans ( dark brown pigmented Italian beans ),
- ½ pound Cannellini beans ( regular white beans ), dried or fresh and
- 3 potatoes,
- 2 red onions,
- sage, rosemary,
- a cut of pork meat not too lean,
- olive oil salt and pepper.
When the soup is ready put aside ½ of the beans and put the rest into the blender. The next day you start with the zuppa recipe. In a big pot put in medium size pieces,
- 1 onion
- 5 potatoes
- one cup of peas
- one cup of celery
- 3 zucchini
- 1 cup of pumpkin
- 2 cups green beans
- one cup carrots
- 2 fresh ripe tomatoes,
- 2 cups fresh fennel,
- 1 cup lentil and the bean soup from the day before.
Add some water, olive oil, salt, pepper or peperoncino ( Italian red pepper ) put on the fire and start to cook.
Now cut into small slices:
one pound of cavolo nero (dark long leaf Italian cabbage )
one pound and ½ of Verza (green cabbage)
and sauté in a pan with olive oil, and add to the soup; bring to boil, lower the heat and let simmer for one and ½ hours.
Ten minutes before taking off the stove sauté some finely chopped garlic, sage, rosemary, onions and parsley (about one cup in all), add to the soup with the cooked beans that you had put aside the day before, bring to boil again and you are finally finished. The finished soup should be a thick mixture of vegetables. While cooking always stir and test for spices.
Serve on pieces of toasted Italian bread sprinkled with olive oil and brushed with fresh garlic.
* 1 cup = 1/4 l
