Il Pancotto
Ingredients
- Two or three small potatoes per person, peeled and sliced. (You can leave on the skins although no one here would.)
- A small chile pepper
- A few cloves of garlic, peeled. The finer you chop it, the stronger the flavor, transporting the taste decidedly from Italy to Little Italy. Here we leave it whole.
- Your best rustic bread—day old is fine, even better.
- A bundle of wild arugula, the kind you can smell from across the room
- Your absolute best extra-virgin olive oil (a bitter, Southern varietal would be ideal, such as coratina, carolea, majatica or ogliarola)
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Put the potatoes in pot with the garlic cloves.
- Cover with cold water, add salt and bring to a boil.
- Add the bread, cut or broken into pieces that easily fit onto a spoon.
- Tear the arugula in half and toss into pot with the chile.
- Simmer 10 minutes undisturbed. Poor in a slug of oil, and allow to sit for a few minutes to amalgamate.
- Spoon into warm bowls, doused with more olive oil.