Italian recipesItališki receptai

Italian Recipes. Pappa al Pomodoro Soup

pappa_al_pomodoroToday on our weekly chapter of Italian Recipes we offer you to try authentic italian recipe of Pappa al Pomodoro soup. Pappa al pomodoro is a tuscan tomato, bread and herb soup. This classic summer dish is very versatile: it can be eaten hot, at room temperature or chilled. It relies on the very best ripe, tasty tomatoes.If you find your tomatoes a little lacking in taste, add a cup or two of good organic crushed tomatoes to enrich the flavour. Indeed the original recipe was without tomatoes, as it dates from long before the discovery of America and their arrival in Europe. The ingredients were therefore simply bread, oil, garlic and salt and this tasty, mushy mixture was often used to wean babies.

Ingredients

• 1 leek
• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 stick of celery
• 4 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 400 g tomatoes
• 2 garlic cloves
• 6 slices hard unsalted bread
• Spring of fresh sage
• Basil
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt, pepper

Preparation

• Finely chop the onion, leek, carrot, and celery.
• Heat a good swirl of olive oil in a large pot. Add the whole clove of garlic, the onions and celery and sauté for a few minutes, until the onion is translucent but not browning.
• Add salt, the peeled and chopped tomatoes, sage and basil and cook until it becomes smooth and creamy, neither too thick nor too runny.
• Add the stock and the pieces of bread and cook, covered, for a further 20 minutes on a low flame. Make sure there are no large pieces of bread that have not been turned into mush! Add more stock or hot water if necessary (the consistency should be mushy but not too liquid – just about possible to eat with a fork).
• Locate the cooked garlic and squeeze it back into the dish with a garlic press. Add the raw chopped or crushed garlic and the finely chopped basil. Taste for seasoning.
• The soup should be served tepid, with olive oil drizzled on top. The flavour can be pepped up with a dash of chili pepper.

Credits: www.artofcookery.com and www.organictuscany.org