How To Make Minestrone Soup
Oct 19th, 2008 by admin
From the vegetarian husband:
‘There are various regional versions of minestrone, and it is usually made using either left-over food or seasonally available produce.
With that in mind, I thought I would use one of the fresh allotment-grown marrows that our elderly neighbour has been kindly leaving by the back gate every time he makes the trip to his vegetable patch. Fresh cut marrow is wonderfully soft and non woody. This soup takes just a few minutes to prepare, but tastes sublime. Of course you can substitute any fresh seasonal produce such as celery, courgette, carrots, potatoes – really anything that has come straight out of the ground and needs to be used whilst fresh. We also have a giant sage bush in our garden that just invited me to pick some tender leaf shoots to add to the soup.
Ingredients:
- 1 medium sized marrow
- 1 tin cannellini beans
- 2 shallots
- 3 cloves garlic
- fresh sage
- 3-4 fresh bay leaves
- cup of ‘baby’ pasta such as annellini or stellini
- Parmesan or Grana Padano cheese
- olive oil
Finely chop the garlic and shallots and fry in olive oil. Chop the marrow into cubes of about 1 cm square and place in the pan on a high heat. Add the sage and bay leaves. The marrow is mostly water and so requires the high heat and constant stirring to give it some colour and flavour. Then add the cannellini beans and enough water to just cover the ingredients in the pan.
Add the baby pasta and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for about 10 minutes. Season with sea salt, black pepper and add plenty of grated Parmesan or Grana Padano on top. Serve hot and enjoy!’
Here are some other recipes in the Italian series:
Click for all the Italian recipes on World Foodie Guide.
That soup sounds really good Helen ! I love that you have a vegetarian version
I wonder how it would taste with cavatappi pasta instead of stellini…
What is the difference between a marrow and a courgette? Are they both zucchini? One yellow and the other green? One of the first Elizabeth David recipes I cooked when we were first married was a minestrone soup and she called for marrows. That was 30 years ago, and our garden had plenty of both yellow summer squash and green zucchini! They both taste about the same, and both easily become unruly in a garden plot!
Hope your trip is going well?
I thought that most types of courgettes, left long enough, grow to become marrows?
Brave Adventurer – everything in our household is vegetarian, which is why I must have meat when I eat out! I think any kind of pasta would work, although it becomes less soup-like if you use bigger shapes, that’s all. Stellini doesn’t take long at all to boil in the soup…
Tess – courgette (zucchini) is just a younger version of the marrow, I think, so if you don’t pick it when it’s young, it grows into a marrow! Trip is going well, just back in HK from Beijing after a 25 hour train journey, and quite zonked.
James – you’re quite right about that! I didn’t know this until our neighbour started giving us both…
Helen Yuet Ling
great blog!! i love your pictures, so so nice, clear and the food looks so yummy!
Happy travel
Summer – thanks so much! We just had more of this soup yesterday evening and the leftovers this lunch. It’s become a classic in our household now, as it’s so easy to make. And extremely comforting in colder weather!
Helen Yuet Ling
Awesome Recipe.. It was delicious.. and im making it again!
susan – great news! It’s so simple and I love this particularly when it’s colder. A perfect comfort dish!
Helen Yuet Ling