Francine was taught this recipe from Paola, a woman from Bologna who shares her regions (Emilia Romagna) cuisine with foreign visitors through Home Food Italy (homefood.it). She explained that this cake is usually served with a glass of dry red wine. As this cake is not overly sweet, Italians will serve it after a meat-based secondi with a red wine sauce, so guests can continue to enjoy the same red wine from dinner through dessert, which is usually frowned upon in Italy. The fruit of the wine provides a wonderful foil for the dense, dark chocolate.

Francine includes raspberries in her recipe, but I decided to use strawberries instead, as the season is just around the corner. Browsing through Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s A Splendid Table, I found the perfect strawberry recipe – Fragole al Vino Rosso. I thought this the perfect accompaniment to the torta, with one simple change; I replace lemon juice with balsamic vinegar, one of Emilia Romagna’s signature products, and a perfect pairing with fresh strawberries.

Salty hard cheeses and fava beans are a classic combination. In Tuscany, one of the regions we visit on our Bike the Wine Road cycling tours, the salty hard cheese of choice would be one of the many Pecorino cheeses produced here.  The name “Pecorino” is a somewhat recent invention. Pecorino comes from the word pecora, meaning sheep, as these cheeses are made from ewe’s milk. But prior to the end of World War II, every area in Tuscany had it’s own “cacio” that it made from ewe’s milk, using very similar production techniques. Today, you will find many types of pecorino cheeses in Tuscany (as well as Sardinia, Lazio and Sicily). Pecorino Toscano has earned the EU DOP quality designation. So the salad itself is quite simple; this is an adaptation of a dish from Elizabeth Schnieder’s book. The labor – multiple steps, but each quite easy – is in the preparation of the beans themselves.

Unless you have access to favas straight off the vine, and using them in stews or purees, you will need to both shell and skin them. Most beans sold in the US will require both. First, spend some time picking out the right beans. You should inspect each pod, feeling for large, individual beans. In my enthusiasm to actually see them in stores – they still rarely grace the produce section in my neck of the woods – I have grabbed handfuls, to get home and open them up and find beans so immature as to yield nothing after peeling. You want to inspect each, feeling for beans inside each pod that are as large as a fingernail.
Next, you will need to shell, blanch, and then peel your fava beans. To do this: Snap the tips off the pods, then strip any strings along the pod. Open the seam, and pull out the individual beans from the plush pod in which they lie.
Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil, and salt. Dump the beans into the boiling water, and return to a boil. Do NOT cover. Cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute, depending on size. No more, or they will squish when you skin them. Drain and drop into ice water to stop the cooking process.
To peel, pinch a bit of skin off of the top of each bean with your fingernail. You will then be able to squeeze the bean at the opposite end and pop out the bean. Truly a labor of love.

One of our favorite towns to visit on our cycling tours is the beautiful historic Pre Alps town of Bassano del Grappa. Our spring trips in the area give us the opportunity to indulge in the area’s renowned white asparagus, which appears mid-March to mid-June. The origins of the delicacy date from as early as 1200.

There are several legends surrounding it’s origin in the area, one attributes its discovery to an extremely violent hailstorm, which destroyed most of the harvest. The farmers, desperate for food of any kind, plowed the land under in a search for edible roots and tubers and discovered a delicacy: the tasty, pleasant white asparagus. In the 1500 and 1600s, the white asparagus of Bassano was prized, reserved for the banquets of the nobles of the Venetian empire. The most ancient recipe was asparagus and eggs, with olive oil and pepper.

What is white asparagus? It is simply green asparagus that has been deprived of light, preventing it from turning green. Today, it is covered with a thick layer of mulch and plastic. This process, called etoilation, creates pale white spears that have a more delicate flavor than their green counterparts.

In Bassano, the asparagus found the ideal environment: sandy, soft, well-drained and slightly calcareous soil on the banks of the Brenta River. The soil type, combined with a particularly mild climate, produces a product recognized for its quality the world over. Its’ pale color, tenderness and sweet-sour perfume make it particularly well-suited for rice dishes, soups, pasta and salads. Its tenderness allows one to enjoy the entire length. Due to its quality and delicacy, it is quite perishable and must be correctly conserved and served within a few days.

The following recipe is from La Cucina Italiana, a classic combination of asparagus and eggs. You can either serve the sauce on the side, and dip individual spears into the sauce, or toss the spears with the sauce and serve, topped with additional egg whites. This is a great spring recipe for fresh asparagus of any color! Enjoy with a nice white wine from the nearby Breganze wine region, such as their Bianco (a blend of the local grape Tai) or Vespaiolo.

For me, a trip to an Umbrian market is not complete without a stop by a
porchettai, a vendor in a white van hawking delicious porchetta sandwiches, a large sandwich of savory roasted pork on a fresh white bun. A tasty snack to revive weary cyclists as we tour Umbria, you can find porchetta sandwiches throughout Italy. My boys and I enjoyed a porchetta sandwich at a music festival in Bolzano. In Umbria, however, one of the hog raising centers of Italy, and renowned for it’s wide array of cured meats, the preparation of porchetta is a serious matter, earning it the Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) status, which “refers to a foodstuff produced either using traditional raw materials or characterized by a traditional composition or a mode of production.”

Refering to La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy, by the Accademia Italiana della Cucina for a traditional porchetta recipe, I found the following description:

“To prepare this traditional Umbrian recipe for a whole spit-roasted, the animal, optimally weighing between 70 and 100 pounds, would first be carefully cleaned and all bristles scraped from the hide. The entrails would be removed and cleaned: the intestines and tripe defatted and placed under salt with a little vinegar, later rinsed and chopped, the heart, lungs, spleen and liver cleaned and chopped. The combined entrails would then be seasoned with salt and pepper and mixed with a generous amount of parboiled fennel and garlic to make a savory filling. Numerous deep cuts would be made into the skin of the pig and the filling both stuffed into the cavity and rubbed into the cuts. After sewing the pig closed and securing it with wire, it would be roasted in a very hot wood-burning oven on two metal sawhorses, usually for about 2 1/2 hours.”

I am usually game for anything, and we have in fact roasted an entire pig, but the whole entrail thing is a bit daunting, and really not possible unless you are butchering the pig yourself. I wanted to create a recipe that would recreate the flavors and textures of porchetta in Italy – the simple but savory seasonings; the lean, moist center, still juicy, surrounded by a bit of fat and crispy skin – without buying (and then having to eat) an entire pig.

Purchasing a pork roast doesn’t do it, there’s no skin, and no fat. A pork belly has the latter two, but no lean meat. The simple solution – combine the two. Here, I season both a pork loin roast and a pork belly with garlic, fennel, rosemary and salt, then wrap the belly around the loin and roast it. We enjoyed thick slices of porchetta for dinner, then tasty porchetta sandwiches for lunch the following day. Not quite the same as enjoying them in the middle of an Umbrian market, but certainly a tasty Sunday night dinner.

This is best started the day before you wish to serve it, but not absolutely necessary!

For a couple of weeks now I have been staring at my last winter pumpkin, waiting for some inspiration to determine it’s fate. After my travels last year to Ferrara, the “City of Squash Eaters”, I covered a sformato recipe as well as cappellacci di zucca. I’ve done a squash soup. I’ve done numerous risottos – not yet squash – but did rice last week. I was browsing through a recent issue of La Cucina Italiana, and spotted a recipe for a squash bread. I realized I hadn’t yet done a bread recipe on this blog, so here’s my first.

One I started looking for recipes for a pumpkin bread, I found dozens. The majority in Italian. I expected that the recipes would hail from the Northern regions of Italy, as pumpkin is a favorite food there, but I found several further afield – one from Tuscany, another from Umbria. The Franziskaner bakery in Bolzano, Alto Adige, describes their Pane di Zucca as made from a traditional recipe, well-suited for both elderly and children and a great accompaniment to meats and cheeses of the region. La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy has a recipe from Emilia-Romagna – home to the aforementioned squash-eating city. This was the sweetest version I came across, including 1 1/2 cups sugar. Elisabeth Crawford includes a Pane di Zucca recipe in her cookbook, Flavors of Friuli. Her version of this baked treat is one of many featured during the Festa di Zucca, an annual festival held the last weekend in October in the small town of Venzone in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. I suspect that every region in Italy that produces squash – which includes most of Italy, from Friuli and Alto Adige to Sicily – has some variation of this bread in it’s cuisine.

All versions included some sort of winter squash or pumpkin that has been cooked – boiled, roasted, however – and then mashed. Adding mashed vegetables, like potatoes, to bread results in breads that are moist and keep longer, so was often done back in the day when the big brick community oven might only be fired up once a week or so. Some were sweet versions that included sugar, and are meant to be served as a dolce, but I elected to keep this version sugar-free. Many included either nuts, or raisins, I added both currants and hazelnuts.

Pane alla Zucca/ Pane con ucca/ Pane di Zucca

2 cups 1/2 inch cubes pumpkin or butternut squash
Olive oil for coating squash and bowl
Kosher salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups semolina flour
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup hazelnuts, toasted, skins removed, and coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons currants, soaked in a tablespoon of warm water, drained

Preheat oven to 375°.

Place the squash cubes on a sheet pan, drizzle with olive oil and toss the cubes to coat them in the oil. Season with salt. Place in the oven and roast until tender, about 12 minutes. Remove from oven, and pass the cubes through a ricer to mash, or just mash with a fork until smooth. Allow to cool to room temperature.

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in 1 cup warm water (110°); let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes. If the mixture doesn’t foam, begin again with fresh yeast.

In a second bowl, combine the all purpose flour and the semolina flour with 1 teaspoon of kosher salt. Add the smashed pumpkin, butter, and flours to the water and yeast, and, using your hands, combine to form a soft dough. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, and knead the dough for 10 – 15 minutes, until soft and elastic. As the dough becomes soft, knead in the chopped nuts and the currants.

Coat the inside of a large bowl with olive oil. Place the dough in the bowl, turning to cover the entire ball of dough with olive oil. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 90 minutes.

Turn the risen dough out onto a floured surface, and form it into a 5-6 inch round loaf. Place on a baking sheet and loosely cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place until double in size, about 45 minutes. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 400°.

Place bread on the middle rack in the preheated oven. Bake until the loaf is golden brown and sounds hollow when tapped, about 45 minutes, rotating loaf about halfway through. Transfer to a rack and allow to cool completely.

Our cycling tours in the Veneto bring us along the fertile valleys of rivers such as the Po, Brenta and Adige. These valleys offer us some wonderful terrain – scenic, yet flat – and a wide variety of agricultural products to play with during our cooking classes. Risottos take center stage during many of our classes, as there are over 20 varieties of rice grown in Italy, most of them in the Veneto, Piedmont, and Lombardia regions of the north.

Over a thousand years ago, the Benedictine nuns and monks owned much of the land in the interior of the Veneto, but much of this was swampland. The orders reclaimed the land, building a system of irrigation canals. Initially these lands produced traditional grains like wheat, barley and rye, but after Venetian Marco Polo returned from the Far East with rice, this grain was incorporated into the Venetian diet. Now, you can find risottos on every menu in the region, flavored with anything from fish to meats to vegetables, from peas to squash to mushrooms. I’ve made many a risotto, but hadn’t yet tried a rice pudding.

Last week, Melissa Clark shared her technique for making an easy rice pudding without a lot of cream or egg custards, or ‘fancy’ techniques, like baking them in a water bath. Adding cream to a risotto rice dish in Italy is just not done; a good risotto rice will have sufficient starch to thicken and make a wonderfully creamy sauce without the cream. It is only when non-Italians (i.e. the French) start cooking risottos that cream creeps in. So it seemed to me that using a nice starchy short grain risotto rice would make a lovely, simple rice pudding. But as Melissa Clark correctly observed, you’ll need a bit more liquid for the same amount of rice, or else you’ll end up with a sticky pudding.

I stole bits and pieces from several Italian rice pudding recipes to create the nice spring version below. Many recipes included candied citrus and dried fruits, but I’ll try one of those next winter. Several had fresh strawberries, and others had almonds – I thought the combination would be a marvelous. Flavoring with vanilla is quite common as well. I have several boxes of Vialone Nano, my favorite risotto rice, produced in the Veneto region and the only rice in Europe with the IGT quality designation. It is shorter and rounder than other varietals, and also absorbs more liquid, which gives it a creamier base in cooking. I thought it would be wonderful in a sweet pudding, and I wasn’t disappointed! But an Arborio or Carnaroli rice would work just fine.

Riso al Latte con Fragole e Mandorle

4 cups whole milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped out and reserved
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
3/4 cup Arborio rice
3 tablespoons toasted almonds, finely chopped
8 large strawberries, 4 finely chopped, 4 sliced

In a medium saucepan, combine milk, sugar, vanilla bean and seeds, and salt; bring to a boil. Add rice, reduce to a gentle simmer and cook, stirring frequently, until rice is tender and pudding is creamy, about 45 minutes.

Stir in 2 tablespoons of the finely chopped almonds and the finely chopped strawberries. Serve the rice pudding warm or at room temperature, topped with the remaining strawberries slices and chopped almonds.

Acquacotta is a dish whose origins hail from the herdsman and shepards of the Maremma region of Tuscany. The Maremma region is in southwestern Tuscany and northeast Lazio, bordered on the west by the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian Seas. It is a rugged area, where you will find the closest thing Italy has to a cowboy, the butteri, traditional cattle-breeders who until recently used horses with a distinctive style of saddle. Once unhealthy because of its many marshes, the Maremma was drained under the fascist regime and repopulated with people from other Italian regions, notably the Veneto.

While out in the hills with their cattle, they would create a soup made from foraged ingredients and hot, or ‘cooked’ water, acqua cotta. As this soup would be made with whatever you can find, you will find many versions of this recipe. But sometimes life in remote rural Maine is like that as well – you make do with what you can find in your local small grocers. According to La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy, there a three fundamental ingredients in Acquacotta: stale bread, which the shepherds would put in their knapsack as they headed out to work; olive oil, as every family managed to cultivate a few olive trees; and aromatic herbs, primarily nepetella, a type of mint found in the sunny fields of the Maremma. The other ingredients could be just about anything, so just use what you have on hand: garlic, onion (which was often eaten like an apple as a side to acquacotta, rather than included in it), cardoons, campion, mushrooms, asparagus, nettles, cabbage, spinach, and so on. Shepherds would add sheep’s-milk cheese, such as pecorino, and fishermen would flavor it with fish.

Here’s the version I created, flavored with what I had on hand. I chose to include the onion, rather than serve it on the side. I served it over duck eggs that I poached in the soup itself.

Acquacotta

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
1 medium onion, sliced
12 stalks asparagus, woody ends removed and cut into 1 inch pieces
2 cloves garlic, one peeled and minced, one just peeled
3 tablespoons aromatic herbs (mint, basil, celery leaves)
4 kale leaves, thick stem removed and chopped
1/2 cup dried mushrooms, rinsed, and chopped if large
1/4 cup grated pecorino
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
5 plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
6 cups hot water
4 slices of bread, toasted
4 eggs

Heat the olive oil in a wide pot over medium heat, add the onion and asparagus and sauté until soft and starting to brown, about 4 or 5 minutes.

Add the minced garlic, herbs,  and kale. Cook 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper

Add the mushrooms, 1 tablespoon of the pecorino, tomato puree and water. Bring to a simmer, and allow to cook for 15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Rub the toasted bread slices with the peeled clove of garlic, and place into 4 bowls. Drizzle each slice of bread with olive oil.

Gently break the eggs into the simmering broth – it may be easiest to break them one at a time into a tea cup and slip them into the broth. Poach for 2 minutes. Remove the eggs, and place each in a bowl on top of the bread. Ladle a small amount of acquacotta into each bowl to cover the bread. Allow to sit for a minute or so, allowing the bread to soak up the soup.

Finish ladling the remainder of the soup over the egg and bread. Sprinkle each with the remaining grated cheese and herbs, and drizzle with olive oil. Serve.

We find duck ragu when we tour the Veneto, rabbit or wild boar (cinghiale) ragu in Tuscany, but probably the ragu most familiar to us back in the US (and apparently in Dharamshala as well) is Ragu Bolognese from Emilia-Romagna. This is one region that takes it’s ragu, named after it’s capital city, very seriously.

My favorite resource for authentic recipes and background from Emilia-Romagna is Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s The Splendid Table. Her recipe for Ragu Bolognese is based upon the official recipe as defined by one of Italy’s “preeminent gastronomic societies, L’Accademia Italiana della Cucina”. Their book, La Cucina: The Regional Cooking of Italy, is another of my favored references. Needless to say, their selected recipe was the subject of much controversy, as restaurant chefs and home cooks throughout the region objected to pretty much every ingredient and technique. But it provides as good a starting point as any.

A few years ago as I was working with Chef Jody Adams, The Charles Hotel, home to her restaurant Rialto, was selected to host the Dalai Lama during a visit to the Boston area. He and his entourage were staying at the hotel for a few days, and Jody was responsible for their luncheon, which is the Dalai Lama’s main meal. She and I set out to learn about his food preferences, focusing on vegetarian, Tibetan food. We discovered two things, 1) he is not vegetarian, upon the recommendation of his doctors and 2) when not at home, he prefers to eat other types of food. We asked what he would like, and the response – Pasta with Bolognese.

So that is what we made, a variation of the recipe that follows. Jody believes a good Bolognese is made from a variety of meats, not just a single type, and several other friends that brag about their Ragu Bolognese also claim the same. I‘ve used beef, pork, I love to add lamb, chicken livers, and find it a great way to use up any small amounts of leftover meat in my refrigerator. Today I have pork that was braised in milk leftover from a cooking class last night, which makes a perfect addition here, complementing the milk that is used in the Bolognese. Enjoy with a nice Sangiovese from Sangiovese di Romagna DOC, or a Cabernet from the Colli Bolognesi.

Ragu Bolognese

Serves 6

1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 ounces pancetta or bacon, diced
1 small onion, cut into 1/4 inch dice
2 celery stalks, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch dice
2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch dice
1 1/4 pounds mixed coarsely ground or chopped meat – beef, pork, lamb, chicken, even finely chopped leftover braised beef
1/2 cup dry Italian white wine
4 cups beef broth, reduced to 2 cups
2 tablespoons concentrated Italian tomato paste
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Place the cream in a small saucepan and simmer until reduced by 1/3. There should be about 6 tablespoons. Set aside.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the pancetta, onion, celery, and carrot and cook until softened, about 5 minutes.

Raise the heat to medium, and add the meats. Brown for 5 minutes, or until the meat is medium brown in color, and almost crisp.

Add the wine, beef broth and tomato paste, stirring until the paste is diluted into the liquid. Reduce the heat to very low, and allow to reduce as slowly as possible. Cook, partially covered, for 2 hours. From time to time, stir in a tablespoon or so of the milk. After 2 hours, all the milk should be used up and the ragu should be only slightly liquid. Stir in the reduced cream. Toss the hot ragu with freshly cooked pasta and serve.

There are several quite interesting regional recipes for frittata in this book, using unique herbs and greens that you would find growing wild in the area. In the Tuscan town of Garfagnana, a springtime Frittata di Vitalba would contain asparagus as well as the tips of young clematis, which grows wild in the Tuscan woods. In Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the feast of St. John on June 24 is celebrated with a Frittata Con Le Erbe, which includes the buds of bladder campion, long pricklyhead poppy, and hops. Lombardia also enjoys frittatas made with hops.

Here in Maine it will be a while before I find much green, given the feet of snow still outside my door. But when fiddlehead season arrives, I will be sure to create my own springtime fritatta! In the meantime, I satisfied my craving for greens with this Easter Frittata. The original recipe called for several meats to flavor it, including pancetta, blood sausage, and salami, but I decided to make a lighter, all vegetable and herb version. I’ll enjoy this with a crisp Orvieto wine from Umbria.

Frittata Pasquale

1 large artichoke, outer leaves and fuzzy choke removed, or 3 small canned artichokes
Juice of 1 lemon (if using fresh artichoke)
1/2 cup herbs (mint, basil, rosemary, marjoram, dill)
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 shallot, minced
1/2 clove garlic
6 stalks asparagus, woody ends trimmed and stalks chopped
4 ounces baby spinach
3 cups arugula
1 shallot, minced
1/2 clove garlic
6 stalks asparagus, woody ends trimmed and stalks chopped
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley
4 large eggs, beaten

Slice the artichokes and place in water with the lemon juice.

Finely chop the herbs and place in a large bowl. Blend with 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the shallot, garlic, asparagus and artichokes and sauté. Remove the garlic when lightly browned, continue to cook the shallot, asparagus and artichokes until tender. Add the spinach and arugula and cook until wilted, about 1-2 minutes.

Add the cooked vegetables to the large bowl with the herb mixture and stir to combine. Add the eggs and mix well. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a heave sauté pan over medium heat. Add the egg mixture. Cook until the bottom is set and lightly browned; you can see when it starts to brown around the edges. Carefully turn the frittata and cook just until the other side is set. Turning the frittata can be tricky. If it looks like you won’t be able to turn it in one piece, you can cover the sauté pan with a plate and flip everything over, then slide the frittata back into the sauté pan to cook the other side.

According to the department of plant genetics at the University of Florence, farro is an ancient, unhybridized grain used for thousands of years in North Africa and the Middle East, where farro kernels have been found in Egyptian tombs. During the height of the Roman Empire, farro was used as a primary food and probably even as money.

I have heard many chefs and other authorities claim that farro is spelt, others claim that it is another grain, emmer. The best concise explanation of the situation I found on Wikipedia:

“Emmer (Triticum dicoccum), spelt (Triticum spelta), and einkorn (Triticum monococcum) are called farro in Italy, sometimes (but not always) distinguished as farro medio, farro grande, and farro piccolo, respectively. Emmer grown in the Garfagnana region of Tuscany is known as farro, and can receive an IGP designation (Indicazione Geografica Protetta) which by law guarantees its geographic origin. Emmer is by far the most common variety grown in Italy, in certain mountain regions of Tuscany and Abruzzo. It is also considered to be of a higher quality for cooking than the other two grains and is sometimes called “true” farro.”

Emmer and spelt both grow best in barren, high altitude regions, and don’t require much pesticides or fertilizers. Emmer is more popular in Tuscany and Umbria, while one will find more spelt in Switzerland, Germany, and South Tyrol, now part of Trentino-Alto Adige. Emmer is preferred for cooking, as it cooks much more quickly. It also has starches similar in structure to those found in risotto rices, making it ideal for creamy risotto dishes. Spelt and wheatberries can be substituted for farro in dishes such as soups and salads, but they require presoaking the night before. I have found spelt sold as farro, and wondered why my 45 minutes of cooking time became twice as long.

Your cooking time will vary significantly depending upon the actual product you may be using, so read the label. Semipearled farro will take about 20 minutes – this is farro that has been processed to remove some of the harder outer hull and bran. Unprocessed farro or emmer will take closer to 45 minutes. Spelt should be presoaked the night before to soften it.

I found 5 different recipes for Minestra di Farro in La Cucina – The Regional Cooking of Italy, from 5 different regions, all with small variations. In Abruzzo, the farro is crushed in a mortar and used to thicken a very simple soup. In the Marche, it is seasoned with marjoram and basil, in Molise with red pepper flakes. In Tuscany, it includes beans, some of which are pureed, some left whole – very similar to a Pasta Fagioli from the Veneto with farro replacing the pasta. In Umbria, the beans are omitted. So there are lots of ways to adjust this soup to your own tastes!

Minestra di Farro

Makes 6-8 first course servings

1 1/2 cup dried beans, such as borlotti or cannelloni
Salt to taste
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 ounces pancetta or bacon, diced
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium carrot, coarsely chopped
1 stalk celery, coarsely chopped
9 ounces finely chopped canned plum tomatoes
1 cup farro
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
¼ cup finely minced flat-leaf parsely, for garnish
¼ cup freshly grated Pecorino or Parmigiano-Reggiano, for garnish

The night before cooking, put the beans to soak in cool water to cover to a depth of 1 inch.

The next day, drain the beans and place in a saucepan with fresh water to cover to a depth of 1 inch. Bring to a simmer, salt, cover, and simmer gently until the beans are tender. Timing will depend on the age of the beans, and can take from 45 to over an hour. Add boiling water if needed as the beans absorb what is in the pot. When the beans are soft, drain, reserving the cooking water for use later in the recipe. Salt the beans to taste.

While the beans are cooking, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the pancetta and sauté until the pancetta starts to release its fat. Add the onion, carrot and celery and cook until they begin to soften. Add the tomatoes and 2 cups of water, bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat.

Set aside about ½ cup of the beans. Puree the remaining beans and the reserved cooking liquid in a food processor and add to the vegetables in the soup kettle. Stir in the reserved beans. Place over low heat, and when the soup starts to simmer, add the farro and stir to mix well. The liquid should be fairly dense but not sticking to the bottom of the pan. Add a little boiling water if necessary to thin.

Cover the pan and cook the farro for about 45 minutes, or until the grains are swollen and soft. Check frequently and add more boiling water if the puree starts to stick.
When done, season with salt and pepper and serve immediately, garnishing the soup with a sprinkle of parsley and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Pass the grated cheese at the table.

This recipe is based on the Tuscany version in La Cucina, and a very similar recipe in Nancy Harmon Jenkins “Flavors of Tuscany”