A sort of Lucanian stone soup, this is from Basilicata’s long repertoire of dishes built from almost nothing at all. Once the sustenance of shepherds who could concoct the dish with a handful of wild grasses and the simple stores they carried, too, it was often the family supper of the contadini—the farmers—whose ascetic lives asked that each bit of bread nourish them. I offer it here as balm, a pastoral sort of medicine, one of the thousand historical, wizened prescripts known to soothe and sustain.

　　

Ingredients

serves 2

　　1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

　　1 small yellow onion, peeled and thinly sliced

　　2 fat cloves garlic, peeled, crushed, and minced

　　2 medium white- or red-skinned potatoes, peeled and chopped

　　2 teaspoons fine sea salt

　　1 small, dried red chile pepper, or 1/3 to 1/2 teaspoon dried chile flakes

　　2 cups beet greens, red chard, or spinach, rinsed, dried, and chopped

　　2 cups water

　　1 small bay leaf

　　4 1/2-inch-thick slices good country bread, a day or two old

　　Just-grated pecorino

　　Olio santo (page 155)

　　

Step 1

In a large soup pot over a lively flame, heat the olive oil and soften the onion and garlic without coloring them. Add the potatoes, rolling them around in the oil and the aromatics, and add the sea salt, the chile pepper, and the greens, combining the components well and permitting them to cook together for a minute or two. Add the water and the bay leaf and simmer for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

　　

Step 2

Cover the pot and let the soup rest while you oven-toast the bread. Place the bread in warm, deep bowls and ladle the soup over it. Generously dust pecorino over the soup and drop tears of olio santo over the cheese.

　　A Taste of Southern Italy