Food

Italian Recipes: Vegetable Soup Minestrone

Italian tuscan soup minestroneToday’s on our weekly chapter of Italian Recipes we offer you to try authentic italian recipe of minestrone. Minestrone is a thick italian soup made with vegetables, often with the addition of pasta or rice. Common ingredients include beans, onions, celery, carrots, stock, and tomatoes. There is no set recipe for minestrone, since it is usually made out of whatever vegetables are in season.
It is very interesting, that some of the earliest origins of minestrone soup pre-date the expansion of the Latin tribes of Rome into what became the Roman Republic and later Roman Empire, when the local diet was “vegetarian by necessity” and consisted mostly of vegetables, such as onions, lentils, cabbage, garlic, broad beans, mushrooms, carrots, asparagus, and turnips.

Ingredients

• 250g dried cannellini beans
• 2 cloves garlic
• Sprig of sage
• 3 cherry tomatoes
• Extravirgin olive oil
• 1 onion
• 1 leek
• 2 carrots
• 1 stick celery
• 1/2 cavolo nero (or kale)
• 1/2 curly white cabbage
• 3 skinned tomatoes (can be canned)
• Optional: other seasonal vegetables (potatoes, zucchini, green beans, winter squash, peas…)
• 1 litre/2 pints vegetable stock
• Salt, pepper

Preparation

• The previous evening, soak the beans in plenty of cold water.
• Change the water and bring slowly to the boil, with the garlic, sage and cherry tomatoes. Cook slowly for approximately 2 hours, until the beans are tender.
• Discard the garlic and sage, and purée half the beans. While the beans are cooking, wash the vegetables well. Cut the carrots into discs or cubes, the tomatoes into large chunks, and the rest into fine slices.
• Put all the vegetables into a large pot to fry for 5 minutes in a good swirl of olive oil. Add the herbs, salt, pepper, the whole and puréed beans and the stock. The quantities should be such as to end up with a thick soup, but remember that the cabbage and cavolo nero will release a lot of water.
• Check the seasoning and cook with the lid on for about an hour and a half on a low flame.
• Serve it on top of hot toast rubbed with raw garlic.
• Dress with plenty of olive oil and black pepper.

Credits: www.organictuscany.org