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.

Recipe XXVII - Polish Beetroot Soup: Barszcz

Ingredients:
6 beetroots, peeled and cleaned
3 onions
3 cloves of garlic
A handful of chopped celery
300g-350g casserole beef
Salt, pepper and cloves
Parsley (I used chives, as I have a surplus in the garden!)
Sour cream or crème fraîche

Instructions:
Cut up all the vegetables. Put the beef, together with the onions, garlic and celery into a saucepan, add water, pepper and salt. Boil it for about an hour with the lid on.
Then, take the beef out. Cut it up and give it to the cats or similar meat-eating pets.



Put the beetroot, cloves and herbs in the water and boil it for a further 45 minutes to one hour.
With a sieve, take out all the solid substance and serve as a clear soup.



The photo doesn't show it, but the soup should be red - serve with a spoonful of sour cream or crème fraîche.

Recipe XXV - Thick Pumpkin and Garlic Soup and Pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds)

Ingredients for the soup:
1 pumpkin
2 onions
1 courgette
1 litre vegetable stock
8 or more cloves of garlic, whole
10 cloves of cardemom, seeded
A spoonful of coriander powder
10 peppercorns
2 slices of 1.5cm-wide slices of bacon, e.g. pancetta



Instructions for the soup:
Peel the outer layer of the pumpkin off and remove the seeds (don't throw them away - see below!). A potato peeler sometimes does the trick, but an ordinary knife is just as good. Put the cloves of garlic in the oven for 25 to 35 minutes. Meanwhile, cut the pumpkin, the onion and the courgette into small pieces.



Crush some peppercorns with a pestle and mortar. Fry the onion and the courgette until they have sweated, adding some of the pepper and all the coriander powder, and then add the pumpkin. After about ten minutes, add some hot vegetable stock and boil with the lid on on a medium temperature.



Remove the garlic from the oven, crush it and add it to the pot with the cardemom, stirring it in really well. Fry some pieces of pancetta in olive oil with the rest of the crushed peppercorns.



Once the pumpkin has softened, take all the contents of the pot and put them in the blender to turn into a pulpy soup. Once removed, serve immediately. Sprinkle the top with the pancetta for extra flavour, or mix it into the soup, like I did.



Instructions for the pepitas:
Remove the seeds from the pumpkin - never throw them away, they are too tasty! You can wash them, take off all the flesh and stringy parts of the pumpkin and put them on an oiled baking tray, spread salt over the top, then turn them over so they are covered in the oil and salt. Put them in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, and eat either immediately or store them in an airtight container.

A pitted pumpkin

 

After roasting

Recipe XVIII - Carrot and Coriander Soup

The thing about soups is that they don't keep for long in the stomach. But this one is like a meal in a bowl. It takes less than an hour to make and puts a warm glow on these cold July days!

Ingredients:
One onion
As many carrots as you like
1l max. vegetable stock (or warm up a vegetable in the saucepan with some herbs, pepper, garlic and salt if you don't have any)
About a tablespoon of ground coriander
Two cloves of garlic
A handful of fresh coriander, or freshly dried green coriander




Instructions:
Take your carrots, onions and garlic and cut them into small pieces.
Fry them gently in a high-sided frying pan.



In a separate saucepan heat the vegetable stock.
Once the carrots, onion and garlic have been there for a good five to ten minutes, they should be getting softer.
Add the stock to the carrots and boil vigorously for ten to fifteen minutes.



Remove it from the pan and put it in a blender.



Whizz until all the ingredients are a runny liquid.




Put it all in a clean saucepan and add the green coriander.
Gently heat and serve with some freshly cut bread.

Recipe XIV - Chick Pea and Sweet Potato Soup

Many of the ingredients in this particular dish were served to me at a very kind friend's house last week. They were in a German diet recipe book (which is the equivalent of a Spanish safe-driving scheme or a Swedish joke shop) but it had potential. I adapted it slightly with a few other things, where you see the (*) next to the ingredient. There are quite a few, considering it was a diet book...

Most of the ingredients before cooking

Ingredients:
2 sweet potatoes
4-5 carrots
1 onion (I used about 5 onions from my garden as they were tiny)
8 or more cloves of garlic
1 leek (*)
1 yellow pepper (*)
A tin of chick peas
3 chicken breasts, cubed (*)
A tin of coconut milk (*) or 250ml yoghurt
A handful of dried coriander (*)
A large helping of ground cinnamon (*)
Some raisins and sultanas (*)
Two spoonfuls of sugar (*)
A spoonful of chili powder (*)
A litre of chicken or vegetable stock (bouillon)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Instructions:
Turn on the oven and roast the garlic for half an hour to 45 minutes.
Cut up the sweet potatoes, carrots, leek, yellow pepper and onion into easily manageable pieces.
Lightly salt the chicken and gently fry it with the onion, pepper and leek in a high-sided pan, adding pepper and some chili powder.

A view into the pan

Remove them and put them in your largest saucepan. Get the sweet potatoes, carrots and chick peas and put them in there too, along with the stock.

After the rest of the ingredients have gone in

Put more coriander in, as well as some more chili powder if you wish. Not forgetting the coconut milk or yoghurt.
Once the garlic is nicely roasted, remove it from the oven and crush it with your pestle and mortar. A fork will do if you're out of pestles! Spoon it into the saucepan and mix it in well.

The ingredients before mashing

Cook on a low heat for as long as you like - the longer the better. As an option, feel free to crush all the ingredients to make a really flavoursome mixture.
Serve with Asian noodles or rice.

 

Ready!