Minestrone Ingredients
Traditional ingredients for minestrone soup: about 375 g white beans (100 g green beans are also possible)
- 2 zucchini,
- 2 carrots,
- 2 stems of leeks,
- 1 clove of garlic,
- half a kilo of cabbage,
- half a bulb,
- 1 stalk of celery,
- 1 sprig of freshly ground basil,
- 2 sprigs of freshly ground rosemary,
- 3 tomatoes (or 2 tablespoons tomato paste),
- salt, pepper to taste,
- olive oil,
- Parmesan cheese.
Preparation of soup minestrone
So, let's get started cooking.The recipe requires a little advance preparation, namely: you need to soak the beans overnight. Bring the water to a boil, cook the prepared beans for 1.5-2 hours. Meanwhile, wash, peel and dice the carrots, zucchini and celery. If your soup is made with green beans, not beans, cut the pods at this stage. Chop the onion with garlic, fry in a saucepan with olive oil, add the carrots, zucchini and celery, and simmer. Potatoes, mushrooms, asparagus, peppers, pumpkin and other vegetables can serve as an alternative to the vegetables mentioned. In the next step, grind some of the cooked beans in a blender, mix with stewed vegetables, put it all in a saucepan with boiling water (about 2.25 l), add chopped cabbage and tomatoes (or tomato paste) and cook for 30 minutes over low heat. It is acceptable to use different types of cabbage, be it broccoli or cauliflower. Note that in some cases the recipe also suggests grinding some of the stewed vegetables in a blender along with the beans. You can put pasta or rice in the soup. All of the above can also be cooked in meat broth. Italian meat eaters like to use pancetta in such cases - bacon from pork belly cured in salt and spices. However, it is quite acceptable to replace it with regular chicken or pork ham. Less common is minestrone with offal. Be careful not to overdo it with water: minestrone simply must be rich! At the last stage, add salt, pepper, spices and herbs. In addition to the spices listed in the ingredients, you can add bay leaf, fennel, basil, sage, rosemary. Italian gourmets advise adding grape wine. Experienced cooks believe that it is necessary to let the soup steep for at least half an hour. There is an opinion that the soup reaches its peak of taste on the second day after cooking.
Recommendations for filing
The recipe recommends serving the soup onlysprinkled with grated Parmesan cheese. What else can you serve minestrone with? The answer to this question depends on the hostess's imagination and the availability of products. The most popular options are: fried bread or croutons, ciabatta, the famous Italian pesto sauce, sour cream, parsley.
The recipe for pesto sauce
As a supplement, I will give you the recipe myselfpopular seasoning served with minestrone soup - pesto sauce. This is also a classic Italian sauce, and it also has a lot of variations. You can serve a lot of dishes with it: salads and pasta, meat and fish dishes. Its base is olive oil, basil, pine nuts, any hard cheese (traditionally sheep's cheese or Parmesan are used). The traditional version of the sauce uses pine seeds. Wash the basil, peel and chop the garlic, grate the cheese. Pine nuts can be fried without oil, or you can not process. According to Italian tradition, all these ingredients are pounded in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle. We leave this to the discretion of the housewives: some will prefer speed and use a blender. The sauce is ready! The pesto recipe also allows for experiments. Instead of pine nuts, you can use walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds. In addition to basil, parsley, dill, spinach, arugula and even mint fit harmoniously into the sauce. And in Sicily, they don’t add nuts to the sauce, but they do put tomatoes in it.
