Cooking abroad: Minestrone di verdure

This week, I’m going to teach you how to prepare an Italian soup, Minestrone.

The soup uses a great variety of vegetables that changes in accordance to taste, availability, etc., so, if you don’t have some of the ingredients listed, or have other ingredients you’d like to use, feel free to make some changes. In this recipe I use bacon, but, if you have the chance, you should really use pancetta.

Ingredients

250g bacon;

150g cauliflower;

2 small carrots;

200g peas;

250g Grana Padano;

3 potatoes;

2 medium onions;

6 cloves of garlic;

1 zucchini;

Parsley;

Sea salt;

Black pepper;

Olive oil.

Cooking

Start off by washing all the vegetables and peeling all that apply. Chop the carrots, onion and garlic into as little pieces as you can. Chop the remaining vegetables (except the peas, obviously) and the bacon into bigger chunks.

Put some olive oil in the pan at medium heat. When it’s hot, throw in the carrots, onion, garlic and bacon. Let them simmer in the oil for two or three minutes while frequently stirring.

Now, throw in some parsley, followed by the cauliflower, peas, potatoes and zucchini into the pan. Again, let them simmer for two or three minutes while frequently stirring.

Afterwards, add water until the water level is slightly above the vegetables. Get the water boiling, season the soup with the pepper and salt (optionally, add some 150ml of white wine as well) to your liking, add about half of the Grana Padano, and leave it boiling under low heat for about 45m.

Before serving, grate the remaining Grana Padano on top of the soup and it will be ready to eat.

 Tomas R.