Minestrone Soup
July 27th, 2010This is one I loosely based on my dad’s Minestrone. Today I was feeling a bit under the weather and I was really in the mood for some Minestrone soup. I didn’t like the sound of any of the on-line recipes I found because they used a lot of shortcuts and that tends to end up tasting like the nasty canned stuff. So I decided to grab some stuff from the super market and wing it. And it actually turning out pretty good. So while I didn’t really write down what I was doing while I was doing it I’m going to try and put the chaos into recipe form. Hope it’s right. 
Ingredients:
About 8 plum tomatoes
1 large onion chopped
3 cloves of garlic chopped
4 fresh basil leaves chopped
2 large carrots chopped
5 potatoes chopped in about 1 inch pieces
Fresh green beans (ehrm about 2 hands full I guess) ended and cut in about 1 inch pieces
1 1/2 cups of green peas
2 cans of vegetable stock (could do water too but I used this this time and it was tasty)
1 can of Garbanzo beans
1 can of Cannelloni beans
1 can of Roman beans
1 pound of ground beef
1 cup of Ditalini pasta (or whichever small soup pasta you prefer)
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
First the tomatoes need to be peeled. If you don’t want to go through the hassle I guess you could get something canned instead. But it’s not that huge a deal. Just fill a pot with enough water for the tomatoes to float around in, add the tomatoes and put it on high heat. Then put cold water and a bunch of ice cubes in a bowl. Wait for the water to boil or until you start to see some of the tomato peel starting to hang loose. Don’t leave them in for too long or they’ll turn to mush. Turn off the heat and move the tomatoes into the bowl with ice water. You should be able to peel the skin right off now.
Cut the tomatoes in half or quarters length wise and use your fingers to extract the seeds. The less seeds remaining the better but don’t go nuts trying to get each and every one of them unless you have OCD and it makes you happy.
Cover the bottom of a large soup pot in olive oil, add the chopped garlic, the de-seeded and de-skinned tomatoes, the chopped onion, chopped carrots, chopped basil, the garbanzo beans (not the other two bean types because they’re mushy already) and one can of vegetable stock. Let this simmer for over high heat until the tomato is starting to melt. Add the other can of vegetable stock and re-fill the can with water three times and add that too. Add the chopped potatoes, the chopped green beans and the peas. Return to boil and let boil for about 30 minutes.
In the mean time season the ground beef to taste with salt pepper and garlic powder. Make little 1 inch meatballs out of it and cook this in some olive oil in a different pan. Start on high and once they all look mainly cooked on the outside lower heat to medium, cover and cook until the insides are done too. I cut one in half every once in a while to see.
Drain most of the fat and oil from the meatballs, add them to the soup. Also add the pasta and keep boiling the soup for the suggested cook time of the pasta. Then add the cannelloni and roman beans and keep on heat until they’ve been heated.
Serve and (hopefully) enjoy.
-Dee.
