Bean Soup
(Zuppa di fagiuoli) One cup of dried beans, kidney, navy or lima is to be soaked over night. Then boil until tender. It is preferable to put the beans to cook in cold water with a pinch of soda. When they come to boil, pour off this water and add fresh.
Chop fine 1/4 onion, one clove of garlic, one sprig of parsley and one piece of celery and put them to fry in 1/4 cup of oil with salt and a generous amount of pepper. When the vegetables are a delicate brown add to them two cups of the broth from the beans and 1 cup of tomatoes (canned or fresh). Let all come to a boil and pour the mixture into the kettle of beans from which some of the water has been drained, if they are very liquid. This soup may be served as it is or rubbed through a sieve before serving. Croutons or triangles of dry toast make an excellent addition. The bean soup is made without meat or chicken broth, and it belongs consequently to that class of soup called by the Italians "Minestra di Magro" or "lean soup, to be served preferably on Friday and other days in which the Roman Catholic Church prohibits the use of meats. 8
A meatless bean soup built on a soffritto, from Maria Gentile's 1919 collection. The method is sound; only a few of its assumptions need translating.
- The soda water is discardedThe pinch of soda is there to soften the skins in hard water, and the recipe has you pour that first water off once it boils. Do not skip the pour-off — soda left in the pot makes the beans slick and dulls their flavor. Salt the second water lightly instead.
- Save the bean liquidTwo cups of the cooking broth go into the soffritto, so drain the beans over a bowl rather than the sink. That starchy liquid is what gives the finished soup body, which matters more here than in a meat-broth soup.
- Quantities and yieldOne cup of dried beans is about 7 oz and will swell to roughly 2 1/2 cups cooked. The finished soup serves three to four as a first course; the "8" at the end of the entry is the book's page or recipe number, not a serving count.
- A quarter cup of oil is correctIt reads as a lot for four aromatics, but the oil is the seasoning in a lean soup and it carries into the finished pot. Use a decent olive oil and do not reduce it much.
- "A piece of celery"One rib, leaves included. With the quarter onion, the garlic and the parsley this is a small soffritto — the vegetables should color slowly over medium-low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, since "a delicate brown" scorched turns the whole pot bitter.
- TomatoesOne cup of canned tomatoes with their juice, crushed by hand, or about three peeled fresh plum tomatoes. After the tomato goes in, give the soup 15 to 20 minutes at a simmer so the raw edge cooks off.
- Beans and cooking timeNavy beans take about an hour once soaked, cannellini or kidney a little longer, dried limas less. Modern dried beans of unknown age vary widely; cook to tenderness, not to the clock.
- SievingWhere the original says rubbed through a sieve, an immersion blender does the same work in a minute. Passing half the pot and returning it gives a thick soup that still has whole beans in it.
The note at the end is the most interesting part of the entry: minestra di magro, "lean soup," is a category defined by church observance rather than by ingredient. Fridays, the vigils of feasts and, in the traditional understanding, much of Lent barred meat, so Italian home cooking developed a full parallel repertoire built on oil, beans, greens and water in place of lard and broth ot penitential so much as simply another way of cooking. Dried beans were the obvious backbone of that repertoire, cheap, storable and high in protein, and Tuscany's reputation as mangiafagioli, bean-eaters, rests on exactly this sort of pot. Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book appeared in New York in 1919, aimed at American households curious about Italian food, which is why she pauses to explain a distinction any Italian cook of the period would have taken for granted.