Minestra Invernale di Verza e Castagne di Guardia Piemontese
A medieval fastness above the Mar Tirreno, Guardia Piemontese is a thirteenth-century village raised up by a band of French-descended, Waldensian heretics in flight from papal justice. Pursued into the pathlessness of Calabria, they resisted the Church’s soldiers then and again and again. Two hundred years had passed when, flush with the dramas of the inquisizione, Pius V dispatched a brigade up into their serene agrarian midst, calling for, in the names of Christ and the Holy Ghost, their massacre. Those few who escaped the flailing of the Church’s swords stayed. And those who were born of them stay, still, speaking a Provencale dialect and celebrating the traditions of French country life, gentling their patch of the earth as though time was a stranger. Too, they are true to their own and simple gastronomic heritage, having obliged no transfusion of the coarser Calabrian kitchen. Here follows a thick mountain soup, so like a Béarnais garbure (a thick cabbage soup from Béarn) even to the blessing of its last smudges with red wine as the French are wont to do à la faire chabrot—pouring a few drops of red wine into the last spoonful of soup, stirring it up and getting every last drop as both a blessing to the cook and a thank-you to God.
Recipe information
Yield
serves 8
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Slit the chestnuts on their flat sides with a short, sharp knife or a hook-bladed chestnut knife and boil them for 3 to 4 minutes in water with 1 tablespoon sea salt. Drain the chestnuts and peel them and rub off their inner skins while they are still warm.
Step 2
In a very large, heavy soup pot over a medium flame, warm 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and sauté the pancetta and the salt pork, until they have rendered their fat and are well crusted. With a slotted spoon, remove the crisped pancetta and salt pork to a holding plate.
Step 3
Add the peeled chestnuts to the pot, rolling them about for a minute or two before adding the crushed cloves of garlic and stirring the mixture together. Add the red wine and 8 cups of water and return to a simmer. Cover the pot with a skewed lid and continue to simmer for 1 hour.
Step 4
In a large sauté pan over a medium flame, warm 1/2 cup of the olive oil and add the turnips and carrots, tossing them about in the fat for a minute or two before adding the leeks, the cabbage, and 1 tablespoon sea salt and stirring the ingredients together for another minute. Remove the vegetables from the flame. After the chestnuts have simmered for 1 hour, add the vegetables to the pot, returning to a simmer. Cook the soup, uncovered, for 1/2 hour or until the chestnuts are tender but still holding their shape. The soup is best when it is served without pureeing first. But, if you wish, pureeing a third or so of the soup and blending it back will thicken it into a stew, leaving its integrity unharmed. It’s your choice.
Step 5
In any case, turn the soup out into a warmed tureen or ladle it into warm, deep soup plates. Pass the reserved crisps of pancetta and salt pork for garnish. Add warm bread, a jug of the good red wine with which the soup was made, and supper is ready.
