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ripe cherry tomatoes (about 1 pound).

Eat Drink Man Woman., and the best part is the beginning, with the Chinese chef chopping with big cleavers," he recalls.

"I thought, 'That's the move!'"So, Leonti bought some large cleavers in Chinatown and a wood butcher block, and set up a soffritto station in the kitchen, where his cooks rhythmically chopped and broke down the whole vegetables into rubble using the same kind of chopping technique I saw a barbecue cook use at Skylight Inn BBQ in Ayden, North Carolina, to break down the meat of whole smoked hogs into a fine mince.The size of the mince matters — the smaller the better — Leonti says, because you're multiplying the surface area of the vegetables by a thousandfold.

More surface area to caramelize in the pan equals more flavor..When I made Leonti's ribollita at home in my Birmingham, Alabama, kitchen, I tried the double-cleaver technique, but quickly switched to an efficient, two-handled mezzaluna after too many stray bits of onion, carrot, and celery fell to the kitchen floor.

I followed his advice and sweated the vegetables in olive oil in a Dutch oven, slowly cooking the mixture, stirring almost as often with a wooden spoon as you would with a roux.

I then turned up the heat until I heard that rapid sizzle, signaling that the soffritto was beginning to caramelize, creating a massive amount of flavor.Cream.. "That would be awful," Henry warns.

"Then you're muddying the waters…Sometimes it's just about putting things together that are unbelievably simple.You pay more attention to them and you get more out of them."4 side dish servings.

One 28-ounce can or two 14-ounce cans of hearts of palm, drained.1/ 3 cup extra virgin olive oil, or as needed.