Love Shakshuka? This One-Pot Tuscan Soup Was Made for You

Even to youngsters, the previous fable often known as Stone Soup can appear an impossibility—how can anybody be fooled into considering you can also make soup from a stone? But for generations Tuscans have accomplished one thing like that within the type of a dish with a equally grim title: acquacotta. It means “cooked water.”

Like stone soup, there is not any actual recipe for acquacotta—it is produced from no matter you may scrounge as much as toss into it. The title makes clear, although, that previously it wasn’t unusual for it to be little greater than boiled water with no matter weeds, shriveled and rotten root greens, sprouting garlic, and lichenous scrapings one might need managed to pry off the rocks within the fields. In such instances of problem, it in all probability smelled of little greater than the determined will of survival.

In different years and particularly into the current, it is secure to imagine that acquacotta was a much less meager victual, and as a substitute was full of a season’s bounty that might fill bellies and nourish our bodies. These extra beneficiant variations are usually the way it’s made at the moment, even when the ominous title has caught. As with so many issues, there are numerous variations of acquacotta that modify with the locale, the seasons, and the cook dinner, however the one I am sharing under is most related to the Maremma, a coastal area that runs from southern Tuscany down into northern Lazio.

Centuries in the past, earlier than it was drained by order of one of many Medicis round 1600, the area was predominantly marshland, and a malarial one at that. I’ve learn in some Italian cookbooks that the Maremma’s acquacotta was typically garlic-heavy, not solely as a result of the individuals beloved garlic however as a result of the mosquitos that carried malaria hated it. Consuming bowls of garlicky acquacotta would possibly simply have meant the distinction between life and loss of life. That mentioned, at the moment’s renditions of acquacotta Maremmana should not essentially pungent with garlic, although they’re constructed on an fragrant base that features onions, celery, garlic, and purple pepper flakes (for a contact of warmth). The aim is to cook dinner the aromatics till meltingly tender and candy with a gentle, clear taste, which you’ll be able to accomplish by gently frying them in olive oil, sometimes including a splash of water or broth to chill the pan down any time the substances begin to sizzle and brown. You retain repeating this course of, simmering down the liquid till the greens begin to fry, then hit it with one other splash of water when the browning will get going.

About that liquid: Because the title suggests, you may (some might argue ought to) use water, however in fact you do not have to. You may use a mild vegetable broth as a substitute for only a bit extra taste. It really works both manner.

As soon as the aromatics are melted down, tomatoes sometimes go into the pot—canned a lot of the yr, although you may swap to contemporary in the summertime—and it is all simmered collectively briefly till the flavors meld. Most bowls of acquacotta Maremmana that I’ve seen really verge on thick-vegetable-stew territory, not a lot brothy soup (although brothier ones do exist), a reality that’s useful for the following stage of this dish’s prep: poaching eggs in it. The eggs are cracked and gently slipped into the chunky stew and left to cook dinner till the whites set, at which level you have got a beneficiant and flavorful one-pot vegetarian meal that is filled with greens, protein, and sufficient fats to quiet an empty abdomen.

Spooned into bowls with garlicky toasts ready to take in the juices and topped with grated cheese, olive oil, and black pepper, it is much more than the title would possibly lead one to anticipate, a proven fact that I might want to not quibble with. I believe we will all agree it is a good factor this “cooked-water soup” is in actuality not watery nor soupy in any respect.

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