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

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

Like stone soup, there is no actual recipe for acquacotta—it is constituted of no matter you possibly can scrounge as much as toss into it. The identify 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 may need managed to pry off the rocks within the fields. In such occasions of issue, it in all probability smelled of little greater than the determined will of survival.

In different years and particularly into the current, it is protected to imagine that acquacotta was a much less meager victual, and as an alternative was crammed with a season’s bounty that might fill bellies and nourish our bodies. These extra beneficiant variations are usually the way it’s made as we speak, even when the ominous identify has caught. As with so many issues, there are numerous variations of acquacotta that adjust with the locale, the seasons, and the prepare dinner, however the one I am sharing beneath 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 folks cherished 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, as we speak’s renditions of acquacotta Maremmana are usually not essentially pungent with garlic, although they’re constructed on an fragrant base that features onions, celery, garlic, and pink pepper flakes (for a contact of warmth). The purpose is to prepare dinner the aromatics till meltingly tender and candy with a light, clear taste, which you’ll accomplish by gently frying them in olive oil, often including a splash of water or broth to chill the pan down any time the elements 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 identify suggests, you possibly can (some could argue ought to) use water, however after all you do not have to. You might use a mild vegetable broth as an alternative for only a bit extra taste. It really works both approach.

As soon as the aromatics are melted down, tomatoes usually go into the pot—canned many of the 12 months, although you possibly can 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 truly verge on thick-vegetable-stew territory, not a lot brothy soup (although brothier ones do exist), a truth that’s useful for the subsequent stage of this dish’s prep: poaching eggs in it. The eggs are cracked and gently slipped into the chunky stew and left to prepare 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 absorb the juices and topped with grated cheese, olive oil, and black pepper, it is much more than the identify would possibly lead one to count on, a indisputable 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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