Soup weather in Los Angeles!

After weeks of hot winds, fires, and relentless sunshine (in L.A. there can be such a thing) it is cold enough today to turn the heater on. This is in addition to the extra layers of clothing and the warm slippers.

Finally the weather cooperates with my favorite convergence at the Farmers’ Market: fresh cranberry beans and cavolo nero. I have my friends at McGrath Farms to thank for introducing me to the former, and the irrepressible and sadly deceased Dee Dee Throgmartin to thank for the later.

Learning to like kale and drop it into soups and vegetable braises was a culinary rite of passage when I first came to Cali and realized that veggies didn’t really come from cans. Ten years ago, when Dee Dee started bringing her bunches of cavolo nero grown from seeds she got from Italy to market, I immediately fell in love with them. With their pebbly texture and richly colored dark green leaves, they look fantastic. They taste even better, whether lightly sautéed in olive oil and garlic, or cooked for hours into a mysterious luscious mass, ala Suzanne Goin.

Now cavolo nero abounds at many a Cali farmer’s table, as have the wealth of recipes supporting their use. I use it for a kale, pancetta and crispy garlic dish I make to serve alongside caramelized cippolini onions for Thanksgiving. I throw it into everything from vegetable soup to frittatas. Sometimes I braise it with garlic and red pepper flakes, and serve it with poached eggs and grilled bread rubbed with fresh garlic.

But my favorite dish is Ribollita, and today is just the day for it. Ribollita can be made a variety of ways, with a variety of bitter greens and with canned cranberry (borlotti) or cannelini beans, but it is all the richer for the fresh ones that are making their brief appearance alongside the kale this year. (Last year the beans didn’t make it into the late fall and I had to rely instead on dried borlottis from Bob’s Red Mill Farms-still good of course, but not the same).

To me the magic of this dish is its simplicity and the sensuality of its preparation. First I roughly chop the vegetables for the mirepoix, and while that is cooking, I shell the fresh beans. The shells of borlotti beans have a distinct cranberry and cream mottled coloring that looks like marbleized Italian paper. So do the beans themselves, though that changes with cooking. Coaxing the plump beans, huddling together in a row, out of their hiding place can be an exercise in patience, but I enjoy the process while breathing in the aroma of the mirepoix on the stove and the mineral-y smell of the kale waiting patiently for its turn under the knife.

Like many simple dishes, the success of this soup relies on assembling the freshest ingredients you can find. There are two exceptions of this rule. Use canned tomatoes, but make them the best – San Marzano or Muir Glen fire-roasted are my picks. Then make sure you have a slightly stale ciabatta on hand. If you are like me and love buying those fragrant loaves but can only allow yourself a few pieces of toast before succumbing to carbo-phobia, this is a good way not to waste the rest of the loaf.

Finally, plan to spend an afternoon attending to this soup in a leisurely way. While the sweet, nutty perfume wafts through the house, read a book or call a friend, Maybe cozy up with a good movie. Then a few hours later, scoop some into a big bowl and eat to your heart’s content –it is rich with minerals and antioxidants. Nothing else required, unless you feel like a glass of good red wine.

Leftovers have sustained me all week long as a lunch I actually look forward to. It only gets better the longer it lasts, about a week to 10 days.

Assemble:

• About 1⁄4 cup olive oil
• a big handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves
• one small celery root, peeled and chopped, or 3 ribs celery, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 red onion, chopped
• coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 -2 cans whole peeled tomatoes
• 2 -3 bunches cavolo nero, trimmed and roughly chopped
• 1 lb fresh cranberry beans, or 2 15-oz. cans borlotti or cannelini beans, drained
• 1 stale loaf ciabatta bread minus the pieces you’ve already eaten for breakfast

1. Pour a thick layer of olive oil into a soup pot and heat over medium-high heat.
2. Add parsley, celery root, garlic, carrots, onion, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring every so often, until onion is transparent and slightly browned, 15–20 minutes.
3. Crush tomatoes and add to the pot. Reduce heat to medium-low; cook until thickened, about 20-30 minutes.
4. Add cavolo nero, and fresh water to cover.
5. Cover the soup pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, until cavolo nero is tender, about 30 minutes.
6. Slice the loaf lengthwise, and tear bread away from the crust into pieces that are about 1″. then add to pot with a few tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, and more salt and pepper to taste.
7. Simmer stirring occasionally until thick, about 30 minutes more .
8. Serve drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil, if you like.

• If you are cooking with canned beans, you can puree an extra can of drained beans with 1/2cup of water in a food processor and add to the soup after step 5
• Add red pepper flakes to taste to the mirepoix in step 2.
• Add a parmesan rind to the pot at step 5
• Leave out step 6. Serve with slices of ciabatta toast rubbed with the open end of a garlic clove that has been sliced in half
• Chop some pancetta into cubes, “blanch” in boiling water for a minute or two, and add to the mirepoix in step 2

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