The Ribollita is a typical Florentine recipe, which has become particularly sought after by tourists as a symbol of the cuisine of this city’, even if now it can not be missing in the menu of most of the finest restaurants.
It was born, like many other typical Florentine dishes, as a dish for poor people. 
There are all the basic elements of Florentine cooking, olive oil, cannellini beans and bread. The base of the dish is a vegetable soup strengthened with slices of stale Tuscan bread, and then eaten the days following the one of cooking, after heating it again.
This is one of the many versions. As usual the quantity of the ingredients are approximate and at the discretion (and taste) of who prepares the dish.
Ingredients:
Tuscan stale bread (possibly homemade type, cooked in wood), boiled cannellini beans, black cabbage, cabbage, chard, potatoes, carrots, leek, onion, a little tomato sauce, olive oil, and thyme.
Preparation:
First of all pass half of the boiled cannellini thorough the vegetable mill, adding afterwards cannellini’s cooking water, so to obtain a sort of broth. Then lightly fry onion and leek in oil (use a pot with high sides) and when the vegetables are browned, add a bit of tomato sauce. 
Leave it cooking for a few minutes, then add cabbage, potatoes, carrots, cut into pieces and left to stew gently. At this point put the remaining beans and the beans broth in the pot and cook it at low fire, adding the thyme just before the end. To complete, arrange slices of bread in a bowl alternating it with ladles of soup. It is already very good!!! but of course it becomes ribollita only after you have left it rest and have heated it, while stirring…… and stirring, before eating it the following day!!!
For more information about italian food and typical products, click here.
