This recipe is something that I'm making my family every single month at least, we
love it. We always go back for seconds and maybe even thirds
It's a classic minestrone. So it starts here in a big pan, we're gonna get that
on a nice medium high heat, we're gonna kick it off with 4 rashes of smoked
bacon, that smokiness is like a secret ingredient.
So in this pan nice big one, we'd go in with some olive oil, we sprinkle in the
bacon. Look look what's happening straight away, we're creating golden
little nuggets of smoky bacon that's called caramelisation right, and
that is gonna happen with the veg and everything that you put in here until
you add the wet stuff. Let's start off with some lovely carrots. This recipe is
brilliant embracing what you've got in your fridge, you know you might have a
bit of swede or turnip I don't know, I don't know what you've got it could be some
savoy cabbage, white cabbage, kale. right all of this stuff can be welcomed into
the wonderful world of minestrone. So I just chunk up the carrots it's all good,
a couple of garlic cloves I'm just gonna roughly chop into the pan. If you look in
the pan by the way as the bacon gets golden, then I go in with the garlic. I'm
using bay leaves dried or fresh it doesn't matter of course, you could put
rosemary in there beautiful flavours. I'm gonna go in with the carrots, just mix it
around it smells amazing already. I'm gonna use celery, just like a couple of
little stalks. Let's get the onion in, 2 small onions or 1 big one. Your cup
of garden soup or minestrone should reflect what is available to you, and it
doesn't matter whether that's frozen or down the markets.
As that is frying up
this is kale, purple and green they're so beautiful aren't they. What I like to do
is take these tough stalks off, chop them up and get them in there in the base so
nothing goes to waste, finely slice these all in there
beautiful. So I got savoy cabbage here, so you can give them a nice little wash.
These outside leaves are perfect for the job
again I'll cut the stalks out and slice them up, literally nothing
is gonna go to waste.
Now look that's what you're talking about
can you see all the caramelisation happening in there. So I'm gonna go in now
with a little cheat, so of course I'd love to use a beautiful, you know chicken
broth I haven't got one. Right so I'm using a little organic vegetable stock
cube, sprinkle that in and now we've earned that colour which is big flavour.
I'm gonna get 2 ingredients in, first is gonna be some nice tinned tomatoes.
So we're breaking the frying now and now we're going into boiling okay, so I'll
fill this up with some water as well. In with the water and then I'm gonna use
some butter beans, nice and chunky and then cannellini beans. So I've used
butter beans and cannellini beans but you can swap out any bean you like, you
can get tins of mixed beans as well which are absolutely brilliant and then
onto the cabbage. So I'll just roll it up like a kind of cigar and just finely
slice it like that, so that will go into our pan beautiful.
Then the kale, look at that and then what I like to do is top up this soup with
some boiling water about a pint. Let that simmer for a couple of minutes
with a lid on top and then let's talk about pasta. So I tend to put all my
odds-and-ends normally in a little jar, but then what I like to do in this soup
is just get a little tea towel and pour the pasta into the tea towel. I just take
up the sides and give them a ruddy good banging right, go over to our beautiful
soup hold it like this and in it goes. So all you've got to do now is just simmer
this for the time that it takes to cook the pasta, it will thicken slightly but
that is going to be a really nice hearty bowl of minestrone, and it's gonna taste
gorgeous.
Okay so it's at about 10-15 minutes the pastas cooked and it's thickened but
it's still nice and brothy, look at that beautiful. So let's get a nice big old
spoon in the bowl, really really good little bit of Parmesan cheese on top or
cheddar cheese of course if you haven't got it, this is a dish that I think
people love. Look at that, pastas brilliant little bits of bacon.
Mmm, absolutely gorgeous.