White beans, greens, olive oil – my ribollita

I spent a good few years of my life cooking Italian food, and I am still in the midst of what I know will be a lifelong love. This is one of the dishes that made me love it so. It is a diva of a dish and it demands you use the very best of everything for it to perform. A ribollita made from the best oil, tomatoes, cavolo nero and bread takes a lot of beating.

I remember every note of my first taste of this in the kitchen of Fifteen London, at the hands of a wonderful chef, Ben Arthur, a Londoner who cooks like an Italian. Dishes like this changed how I looked at food, how I understood it – why the oil needed to be the very best, why there needed to be a lot of it, why traditions were followed and techniques respected. A life-changing bowl of soup, you could say.

This is an autumn version. In summer I use chard or spinach in place of the cavolo and squashed fresh tomatoes instead of tinned ones. I use tinned beans here for ease, but you could cook your own too.

A good veg stock is useful here, as it adds depth of flavour and back bone that it’s hard to get with stock cubes. Good textured bread is a must too – I use a good sourdough or country-style loaf from my local bakery. Spongy white bread won’t work in the same way.

Cavolo nero, or black cabbage, as it translates, is a deep black green that shows up in late summer and hangs around for a couple of months. I love its deep mineral flavour and its robust nature – the leaves lend themselves very well to cooking in stews. It seems to team with olive oil in some kind of divine partnership. If you can’t get cavolo, then kale will stand in just as well.