Recipe CIX - Minestrone Soup

The many Italians I know have a penchant for telling me how much they yearn for their homes and all the wonderful cooking they are missing out on because they live in Germany or Luxembourg. "What is August for you is November for us", one of them said. Another admonished me for eating penne rigate with a spoon for practical reasons - it's a short pasta and fits nicely on the spoon. "It is forbidden in Italy to eat any kind of pasta with a spoon!" shrieked another with a face like I had just gone to the toilet on her pet cat. I mean, what's going to happen? Is it going to cause outbreaks of bunga-bunga in the Sistine Chapel? No. Get over it.

Well, this is my message to them: if you had spent less time obeying your rather superstitious rules of the kitchen and more time obeying the temporal laws of the state, the place you left might be in a lot better shape and you might not have had to abandon Italy in the first place... just a thought.

Anyway...

Although I am not a fan of celery, this dish would not be Minestrone without it.

It is very easy to make, and considering the few ingredients, it is rather tasty on a cold, rainy and dreary November afternoon. My November, not their November.

Ingredients:

5 large carrots, sliced to your preference

Half a Savoy cabbage (shredded)

2 large onions (sliced)

2-3 large potatoes (peeled and cut into bite-size pieces)

5 cloves of garlic (roughly sliced)

4 sticks of celery (cut into small pieces)

Some butter beans

A tin of tomatoes (yes, Italian cooking is based on it!)

Some fresh tomatoes (quartered)

500ml to 1litre of vegetable stock (hot)

Ground black pepper

Salt

Instructions:

Take the onions, carrots and celery and fry them in a medium-hot pan in olive oil until they have sweated nicely and are a little softer. Add salt and pepper and stir continually.

Add the garlic and once it starts to release its aroma, add the potatoes and keep stirring. Add the fresh tomatoes and the tinned tomatoes and reduce the heat. Put on the lid and let the flavours run for a good 10 minutes.

Now you can add the hot vegetable stock and let it boil gently for a minimum of 20 minutes. At this point, you can add the Savoy cabbage and once soft (a couple of minutes), serve with some decent sliced bread.