My minestrone soup of yore

Several weeks ago my cabbagephobic husband broke his cabbage taboo and fixed a vegetable and sausage soup. The deliciousness of the sausage would outweigh any ick or stink of the cabbage, so his reasoning went. Another unusual (for us) addition to this concoction: tomato juice. The combination of tomato-based broth and mildly crunchy cabbage reminded me of a minestrone soup I used to enjoy many years ago.

This minestrone, as I remember it, had tender red kidney beans and soft but assertive elbow macaronis. The recipe, which I just dug up, called for frozen mixed vegetables, beef bouillon cubes, and a lot of celery as well; but the memorable aspects were the cabbage, tomato, and macaroni. I had made a mental note to fix this memorable minestrone sometime soon. Then I forgot about it again . . .

. . . until I started looking for a suitable use for a large amount of curly endive leftover from an overzealous greens purchase I made in pursuit of my first salad ala Alice Waters. The salad consisted only of red leaf lettuce and curly endive, the endive being totally edible and nicely bitter, but a little tough. “I feel like a ruminant,” declared my husband between chews. I conceded that this hearty green might be more easily eaten cooked, so I searched the Web for ideas and found a minestrone soup recipe on the Eating Well site. Aha! I can dig up my old minestrone soup recipe and add the endive to that!

But wait! There’s more! Let me see if The Art of Simple Food has a minestrone recipe. If it does, I’ll make that instead!

Alice Waters describes minestrone as “a big soup of many vegetables” that is “a deeply satisfying meal in itself.” I was a little concerned that her base recipe included no liquid other than olive oil or water or bean-cooking water (no tomato sauce? no chicken broth? no other canned offering?). Would the vegetables and a sane amount of salt be enough to create a satisfying supper? I set out to find out.

Waters’s base recipe calls for dried cannellini or borlotti beans to be cooked separately, then chopped onion and carrots to be cooked in hot olive oil. After these base vegetables are cooked, chopped garlic cloves, sprigs of thyme, bay leaf, and salt are added. After that cooks for five minutes, add water to boiling, then add diced leek and cut green beans. Cook that for five minutes, then add zucchini and tomatoes. Cook that for 15 minutes, add bean cooking liquid (and the drained beans, I assume) and chopped spinach. Cook five minutes, adjusting seasoning and thickness (add more bean cooking liquid if necessary). Once in serving bowls, garnish with olive oil and grated Parmesan cheese.

As usual, I didn’t read the recipe too closely before committing myself to this for a weeknight meal. Luckily I started chopping veggies the (weekend) day before, but there was a lot of chopping left to do two hours before dinnertime. After making substitutions and misreading what ideally replaces what when applying seasonal variations, here’s what finally went into my version:

1 cup dried red kidney beans
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
5 thyme sprigs
2 bay leaves
4-6 teaspoons salt
3 cups water
1 small leek, diced
1 medium zucchini, diced
1/2 pound Yukon gold potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces
4 Roma tomatoes, skinned, seeded, and chopped
1 head curly endive, chopped
1/2 small head cabbage, chopped
2 pounds spinach, chopped
4-5 cups bean cooking liquid
Parmesan cheese, as garnish

I chose red kidney beans not because they were the beans in my memorable minestrone, but because I could not find dried cannellini or borlotti at my local Shaw’s. (I did buy backup canned beans just in case; historically I don’t have the best of luck with soaking and cooking legumes other than lentils.) The extra tomatoes (Waters called for two) do stem from my old recipe — minestrone soup must be red, right? I already explained the endive. Zucchini was going to be replaced by turnips, but I decided I drew the line at trying to cut up turnips as the umpteenth vegetable. I left out the originally required green beans because all they had at the super were two-pound packages; I needed just a half pound and generally don’t like buying prepackaged green beans anyway.

Let the insanity begin! After two hours of chopping (one hour with husband’s help), I think I was ready to begin. Here’s the pre-soup tableau; you can click on the image to see an enlargement.

Longer story short, the cooking, from heating olive oil to scooping into soup bowls, took a little over an hour. Apparently my vegetable-to-liquid ratio was too high–by the time I added the spinach, that “soup” was hard to stir! I had to all all the bean cooking liquid, about 5 or 6 cups total. If I had used canned beans, I’m not sure what I would have added.

The result: absolute perfection! Fresh. Mellow. Melded. LOADED with fabulous vegetables. I ate a huge bowlful and loved every minute of it. Spinach was the most assertive flavor, which was fine by me. Caught without a crunchy accompaniment, I had sliced a whole-wheat kaiser roll into slices lengthwise, toasted them to a crisp, and served them with rosemary butter (adaptation of Waters’s herb butter).

Minestrone. It's day two, so the spinach is darker (still tastes fab, though!)

I had leftovers for lunch and supper the next day. Here’s a second-day photo. Unfortunately, the attractive spring green of the freshly cooked spinach had given way to a less tantalizing darker, blacker tone, but I wanted to show you the texture of the soup. (Again, you can click on the photo to see an enlargement.) I was tickled to discover that the soup I once believed only existed in a red broth was a melody of beautiful greens; it sort of reminded me of pesto. I look forward to making this again in all of its variations. Including the elbow macaroni.