Acquacotta from Tuscia

Preparation:

Preparation: In a saucepan containing only water and salt, cook the peeled and halved potatoes, 4 whole garlic cloves, the sliced onions, the mint, the chilli pepper and the chopped tomatoes (once, out of season, small cluster tomatoes were used, today you can also use bottled tomato pulp, or canned peeled tomatoes). Wild chicory should be blanched separately for a few minutes, to eliminate the bitter taste not appreciated by everyone, and should be added at a later time, while cultivated chicory can be introduced right from the start. To obtain a more complete and more pleasant single dish, halfway through cooking you can add the cod soaked from the previous evening, even the less valuable part (the so-called ears), cut into not too small squares. As an alternative to cod, always in the form of a single dish, at the end of cooking you can add an egg per person, poached in the broth of the same soup or even beaten inside. During cooking it is necessary to maintain a certain amount of liquid, just enough to soak the bread, by adding hot water or stock cube. When cooked, pour the cooking broth together with the chicory, potatoes and a small piece of cod or the shirt, in order to have all the ingredients present for each dish. Let it rest for a few minutes with the plate covered, so that the bread can get wet properly, then throw away all the residual liquid not absorbed by the bread, and drizzle the soup abundantly with our extra-virgin olive oil, with a robust and distinctive.