Minestrone for Feeding the Soul

Minestrone for Six or Eight

I try to keep my recipes small, serving four to six. This is because I mostly cook for two.

This Italian style vegetable soup is impossible to make small. There is the beauty of it. It is a true peasant soup. It’s hearty, low cost, delicious and can be easily make in a quantity to feed and an army. Two of the ingredients are foods that when cooked blow up. The pasta and beans absorb significant amounts of liquid and prodigiously expand in both bulk and volume.

It’s a true miracle. Because we experience this blossoming on a regular basis we take it for granted. It is a miracle nonetheless. In fact if you examine the list of ingredients everything is mostly water. The vegetables, mostly water. The wine, mostly water.  The cheese starts out as milk. Even the pork sausage is at its source mostly water.

The mysteries of bread, beer and wine are miracles also. Food Inc. tends to blind us of that simple truth. In exchange for a few extra dollars it gives us convenience and in doing so mindlessly robs a small piece of our souls. All of those small chunks of soul taken by the industrial economy add up. It’s all unintentional to be sure. But it’s very real consequences ripple across society.

But I digress, now back to the soup. For it you will need:

Water

2/3 Cup of Dried Kidney Beans (Do not take the shortcut by using canned.)

½ LB of Dried Pasta (I used penne but small pasta shells or even broken spaghetti will work fine)

½ Cup of Red Wine

2 TBS Italian Seasoning

1 TBS Beef Soup Base or 2 Bullion Cubes

1 Pound of Hot Italian Sausage Links, cooked, skinned and cut into bite sized pieces

1 14.5 oz. Can of Diced Salt Free Tomatoes

1 Onion Diced

2 Zucchinis cut into bite sized pieces

1 Rib of Celery diced   

1 10 oz. Package of Frozen Chopped Spinach

1 ½ to 2 Cups of grated Parmesan or Romano Cheese or a combination of both

Double quick soak the beans in 3 cups water with the Italian Seasoning and beef soup base by bringing the water to a boil for about five minutes, cover and then turn off the heat and let sit for an hour. Bring to a boil again for about five minutes and once again let rest covered for about an hour.

The beauty of dried beans is that they take on the flavors of the liquids in which they are boiled while maintaining the own unique subtle flavor. Kidney beans and lima beans are not the same thing. This why, for this recipe and recipes like it, canned beans are not allowed.  The same ability to assume flavor of course is true with rice. With this in mind, the inventor of Minute Rice should be arrested and forever locked in prison for “high crimes” against humanity.  I have wandered off track again but we are, after all, considering the miraculous.

Meanwhile cut the vegetables and cook the sausages by gently boiling for about twenty minutes. Cool then remove the casings and cut into bite sized pieces. Once the beans are ready, almost tender, combine all ingredients except to pasta into a large soup pot. The liquid from soaking the beans and that from the canned tomatoes should cover everything with about two inches to spare. If not add more water.

Bring the soup to a boil then reduce to very slow boil for an hour to cook the vegetables and allow the broth to mature.

Cook the pasta el dente just prior to serving. Start it about twenty minutes before. Then either add it to the soup pot or the individual bowls when serving. Top everything with a generous helping of grated cheese and enjoy. This soup goes will with thick slices of French bread, broiled on both sides until lightly browned and topped with minced garlic and olive oil.