Acquacotta: My First Trial of Making Tuscan Soup

I am not good at cooking complicated stuff, that’s why I am always in search for simple recipes.

I like Tuscan soup, but I used to keep a distance from cooking one. To me, it seemed complicated to cook: it has smashed vegetables inside, and with thick texture, etc. It is just so different from a Chinese soup! However one day I spotted a recipe online that put everything so easy, made me push my boundary.

Obeying the recipe, I used a lot of vegetables: celery, tomatoes, onions, basil, etc.. First chop them, then cook them into broth in a pan. At the end of the preparations, add egg and bread into the soup.

The final result of my acquacotta soup. I put garlic bread into it.

In Italian “Acqua” means “Water”, and “cotta” means “cooked”. So Acquacotta literally means “cooked water”. The name relates to its peasant origins, when peasants travelled bringing little food with them, such as dried meat, stale bread, some herbs, oil, etc., and they cooked everything all together to make this dish.

For those who enjoy cooking but don’t want to make sophisticated stuff, this soup definitely is one of your choices. You can find the recipe below:

Ingredient (for 2 people):

Onion (x1)

Celery (x1)

Tomatoes (2-3)

Eggs (1-2)

Basil

Olive oil

Grounded black pepper

Salt

Cooking steps:

1. Put olive oil into the pan. Add black pepper and salt into it, and heat up with milt fire.

2. Same time cut the onion into small slides and put into the pan. Stir and mix the onion with other ingredients. Keep heating using the milt fire.

3. Cut the celery, together with the leaves, into small pieces. Put them into the pan to stew.

4. Cut the tomatoes and basil leaves. Put into the pan to stew with other ingredients.

5. Add water and turn to big fire until boiling. Keep boiling for 5 – 8 minutes before turn into milt fire.

6. Put eggs into the stew (this is optional if you prefer the soup to be watery).

7. Add salt into the soup and keep boiling.

8. Turn off the fire after all the vegetables are soft and all the flavors are melt into the soup.

Do give it a try! Buon Appetito!