When my editor and I agreed that we would put recipes in The Kitchen Daughter, I was thrilled. Still am, actually.
But it introduced a new challenge -- although my narrator, Ginny, lovingly describes each dish she makes as she makes it, I wasn't exactly following a set recipe when I wrote each of those scenes. Man-Catcher Brownies, yes, because that's an existing recipe from the Washington Post -- but the ribollita? The aji de gallina? Not so much. Add to that the challenge that there end up being two ribollita recipes in the book -- a dish which, by the way, I'd never actually made -- and there is a lot of recipe-testing around here, and a whole lot of it ends up in the form of bread soup for lunch.
Even in half-batches, if I'm the only one eating it (and I hate to throw things away) it adds up. Suffice it to say that I won't be making myself ribollita for a while.
But the good news is, the version of ribollita that opens the book -- Nonna's ribollita, which contains only bread, water, kale, white beans, garlic, and tomatoes -- is shockingly delicious for something so simple.
Some tests, we pass with flying colors.
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