Acquacotta — "cooked water" — is the Tuscan peasant soup of seasonal vegetables, olive oil, and water with bread and egg, in which the technique of building maximum flavour from the simplest possible ingredients reaches its apotheosis. The name reflects its origins in absolute poverty: water, whatever vegetables the field or garden offered, olive oil, and stale bread. Its genius is that the slow cooking of these simple elements in water with good olive oil produces a broth with surprising depth — the vegetables' glutamates, the olive oil's aromatic compounds, and the slowly dissolved bread starch producing a preparation more complex than its ingredients suggest.
- **Seasonal vegetables:** Whatever is available — celery, tomato, onion, chard in summer; cavolo nero, bean, potato in winter. The specific combination matters less than the quality - **Olive oil:** Generous — this is the fat that carries the vegetable's aromatic compounds. A weak acquacotta is one with insufficient olive oil - **The egg:** A raw egg poached in the hot soup in the final minutes — the egg white sets around the bread, binding it to the bowl; the yolk remains slightly liquid - **The bread:** Day-old rustic bread placed in the bowl before the soup is ladled over — it absorbs the broth, softening while retaining some structure
Hazan