Though the famous popular Acquacotta soup has a very mysterious and unusual name, it is a well-known soup dish that originates from the Maremma area of Tuscany. The Italian name of this soup literally means “cooked water”.

Legend has it that the inventors of this dish, the herdsmen and coal men of Maremma, were accustomed to frequent journeys, and thus normally traveled with stale bread, dried meat, oil, garlic, onion, and a few herbs, in order to prepare acquacotta.

A more poetic version of its origin can be traced in the short movie “La Zuppa di Pietra“ (Stone Soup) by Christian Carmosino, winner of the First Prize at the latest Academia Barilla Short Films Festival.

In the short film director Carmosino tells a story staged in the 19th century in a village in rural Italy, where the metaphore of a stone soup stands for the pleasure of getting around the table for a rich meal all together by sharing ingredients, big smiles, and a big heart.

You can discover more about award winning director Christian Ambrosino by browsing his online channels on YouTube and MySpace, from where we got the embed code (with Christian’s authorization) to republish the beautiful “La Zuppa di Pietra“ short film here below in full. Enjoy it!

Contrary to its origins as a peasant dish, made simply of water and a few flavors, acquacotta is a very hardy soup. There is an assortment of recipes for acquacotta amongst the different areas of Tuscany, yet acquacotta is distinguishable from other Tuscan soups due to its use of eggs and stale bread at the end of (and not during) its preparation.

We found several book tracing the origins and tradition of acquacotta at the Academia Barilla’s Gastronomic Library in Parma, such as “Cucina e vini della Toscana” by Flavio Collutta (1974 Mursia Editore), “Il grande libro della cucina Toscana” by Paolo Petroni (1991 Ponte alle Grazie), and Sara Vignozzi and Gabriele Ganci’s cookbook “Tuscany – Flavour of Italy” (McRae Books, 1999), from which we picked the traditional recipe here below (image taken from the same book).

ACQUACOTTA
(serves 4)

Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: about 1 hour
Recipe grading: fairly easy

INGREDIENTS

- 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 onions, thinly sliced
- 2 cups (10 oz - 300 g) fresh or frozen peas
- 1 and 1/4 cups (l7 oz - 200 g) freshly hulled broad beans
- 1 medium carrot, sliced
- 1 stalk celery, thinly sliced
- 1 crumbled dried chili pepper
- salt to taste
- 12 oz - 300 g trimmed young Swiss chard or spinach leaves, washed and shredded
- 10 oz - 300 g firm, ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped
- 6 and 1/2 cups (2 and 1/2 pints - 1.5 liters) boiling water
- 4 large fresh eggs
- freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup (2 oz - 60 g) freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino cheese
- 4 slices firm-textured white bread, 2 days old
- 1 clove garlic

Suggested wine: any dry white wine

PREPARATION

Pour the oil into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add the onions, peas, fava beans, carrot, celery, chili pepper, and a dash of salt.

Sauté for about 10 minutes until tender and lightly browned. Add the chard or spinach and the tomatoes and simmer for 15 minutes.

Pour in the boiling water and leave to simmer gently for 40 minutes, adding more salt if necessary.

Using a fork or balloon whisk, beat the eggs with salt, pepper, and the grated Parmigiano or pecorino cheese.

Toast the bread and when golden brown, rub both sides of each slice with the garlic. Place a slice in each soup bowl or in individual straight-sided earthenware dishes, and pour a quarter of the beaten egg mixture over each serving.

Give the soup a final stir and then ladle into the bowls. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and add a pinch of pepper.

Serve immediately and enjoy acquacotta sharing it with others, as in Christian Carmosino’s award winning short movie!

CHEF TIPS

Our Chefs at the Academia Barilla Culinary School suggest to use Academia Barilla’s products such as Toscano IGP extra virgin olive oil, Peeled Cherry Tomatoes, and Academia Barilla’s traditional Parmigiano Reggiano or the Sardinian Pecorino Sardo Gran Cru, which you can all easily find at our gourmet online store. also, try Mantecarlo Bianco as dry white wine for better recipe results.

Buon appetito from Academia Barilla and Italian Food Lovers!

Enjoy some magic cinema moment with the video below, that puts together excerpts and trailers from the three short movies winners of the Premio Academia Barilla 2008 - the Academia Barilla Short Movie Award to Italian directors who bring food culture on a big screen, even if through a short movie.

This year’s winners of the Academia Barilla Short Movie Award were:

First Prize - La zuppa di pietra, directed by Christian Carmosino
Second Prize - Bellissimi, directed by Davide Vanni
Third Prize - Dulcis in fundo, directed by Davide Abate

Check out our previous post for more info and synopsis of the award winning movies - but also enjoy the video trailers below!

Congratulations to the winners from the Italian Food Lovers blogging team!

Last week the Auditorium of the Academia Barilla Culinary School in Parma, Italy, has been theater of a gala event at the crossroad between movie culture and food culture: the Academia Barilla Short Film Festival Awards - Premio Academia Barilla 2008.

Academia Barilla hosted the 4th Edition of the special Gastronomic section of the Brescello Short Film Festival, that awards short films directors who tell stories about food through a short film. The section is named “Kitchen Stories” and feature special award prizes from Academia Barilla.

The gala evening at the Auditorium started at around 9.30 with a brief welcome introduction by Academia Barilla President Gianluigi Zenti, here pictured while awarding the First Prize winner Christian Carmosiano.

Gianluigi Zenti pointed out that “cinema gifted us in time with many images that made it into the history of Italian and international gastronomic culture”. The screening of the awarded films has been introduced by Virginio Dall’Aglio, President of the Brescello Film Festival, supported by TV Parma news presenter Francesca Strozzi and Filiberto Molossi, a journalist from the local newspaper Gazzetta di Parma.

The Winners of the 2008 Academia Barilla Awards are:

First Prize - La zuppa di pietra
Direction Christian Carmosino (Rome)
Production Year: 2007 - Time: 14’

Synopsis: Once upon a time there was a wanderer.. who roving from one village to the other, used to prepare a special soup. The main ingredient.. a simple magic stone, capable of knocking down the barriers of indifference and the fear towards strangers.
This short film narrates in an ironic way the origin of the famous recipe of Acquacotta, the renowned soup diffused in all central Italy.

Second Prize - Bellissimi
Direction Davide Vanni (Vobarno, Brescia)
Production Year: 2008 - Time: 18’

Synopsis: Few kilometers away from the port of Imperia, Liguria, immersed among the hills covered by olive trees, there is the minuscule village, Bellissimi. At the end of the summer, when the tourists begin to leave, something marvelous happens here.
Renzo, the last builder of hot-hair paper balloons, prepare the new ones which will color the sky during the celebration of Misericordia, the first Sunday of September. While women are up to the preparation of bread and spinach cake following the old traditions.

Third Prize - Dulcis in fundo
Direction Davide Abate (Pisa)
Production Year: 2007 - Time: 2’30’’

Synopsis: Dancing hands molding a special cake in a symphony of senses. 2 minutes of rhythm, sensuality and movement.

Special Mention - Filastrocca appetitosa
Out of competition
Direction, screenplay and photography: 5th grade school kids from the Primary School “Salvemini” of Turin.
Production Year: 2003 - Time: 2’18’’

Synopsis: A funny nursery rhyme which illustrates the correct principles for a good nutrition, a basic element for a harmonious and healthy life.

The Academia Barilla Short Film Festival Gala Awards has been delighted also by the Chef team of the Academia Barilla Culinary School who prepared special gourmet finger food for the gala participants, and also engaged in the preparation of nitrogen ice cream, a special recipe to make ice cream in a very short time: it takes only few minutes and the result presents very fresh and genuine flavor.

Just some picture of this nitrogen ice cream chef demo for now, but we promise you that we will soon inquire with our Chef, and will try to get you the nitrogen ice cream secret before summertime!

If you want to see the trailers of the three award-winning short films, check out this page at the Repubblica Parma website.