Lucchese Soup

Ingredients:
– black cabbage
– dried beans (preferably of the Lucchese variety)
– extra virgin olive oil from an oil mill
– slighty stale white bread
– mixed vegetables (onion, carrot, celery, cabbage, chard)
– wild herbs (such as ‘ingrassaporcio, dandelion, nettles)
– a bunch of mixed herbs (parsley, chives, marjoram, thyme, pennyroyal)

Preparation:
– Wash the beans and leave them to soak overnight
– Pick the wild herbs
– Cook the beans in the water they soaked in
– Pass some of the beans through a sieve to remove their skins. Leave the rest whole.
– Cook the mixed vegetables and wild herbs in a large pan, remembering to start cooking the hardest varieties first, for 3 or 4 hours, adding a little extra virgin olive oil every so often
– Prepare a ‘pesto’ by chopping the bunch of mixed herbs as finely as possible and add to the pan. Cook for a maximum of 10 minutes.
– Cut thin slices of bread and place a layer in a soup dish. Cover with some of the cooked vegetables.
– Continue in this way, alternating layers of bread and layers of vegetables.
– Cover the soup dish and allow the bread to be softened.
– Serve with excellent extra virgin olive oil from an oil mill