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

Even to kids, the previous fable generally known as Stone Soup can appear an impossibility—how can anybody be fooled into considering you may 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 no actual recipe for acquacotta—it is constituted of no matter you’ll be able to 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 occasions of issue, it most likely 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 stuffed with a season’s bounty that would fill bellies and nourish our bodies. These extra beneficiant variations are usually the way it’s made right this moment, even when the ominous title has caught. As with so many issues, there are numerous variations of acquacotta that fluctuate 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 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 stated, right this moment’s renditions of acquacotta Maremmana will not be essentially pungent with garlic, although they’re constructed on an fragrant base that features onions, celery, garlic, and crimson pepper flakes (for a contact of warmth). The purpose 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, often including a splash of water or broth to chill the pan down any time the components 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’ll be able to (some might argue ought to) use water, however in fact 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 method.

As soon as the aromatics are melted down, tomatoes usually go into the pot—canned a lot of the 12 months, although you’ll be able to change 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 cook dinner till the whites set, at which level you may have 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 title would possibly lead one to count on, a incontrovertible fact that I might desire to not quibble with. I feel we are able to 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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