Andrea’s Recipes

Minestrone is a very versatile soup. With only a few basic ingredients—pasta, beans, stock, vegetables—you can create a beautiful, hearty soup. What you do with it is really up to your imagination. This is one of our favorite versions, a delicious soup for the winter months. We like to have this with Three Day Crusty Hard Rolls.

Equipment

8 to 10 quart stock pot
sharp knife
food processor (I like how the food processor perfectly shreds the cabbage.)

Ingredients

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 large celery stalk, chopped
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried or fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 cup pearl barley
2 potatoes, diced
2 large carrots, diced
8 cups vegetable stock
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 or 4 grinds of fresh black pepper
1 (16 oz) package frozen yellow squash
1 can kidney beans
2/3 cup small pasta, your choice
3 roma tomatoes, cut into chunks
1 (6 oz) can tomato paste
a few sprigs of parsley
2 cups shredded green cabbage
parmesan cheese

Preparation

1. Saute onion, celery, garlic, basil, rosemary, oregano, thyme in oil until onion is soft. Add barley, potatoes, carrots, and stock and bring to a boil. Cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

2. Add squash; cover and simmer 20 more minutes. Mix in beans and their liquid, pasta, tomatoes, tomato paste, and parsley. Bring to a boil, cover, gently boil until pasta is cooked (15 minutes).

3. Add cabbage and cook, uncovered, until cabbage is tender-crisp (5 minutes). Remove the parsley sprigs. Salt and pepper to taste. Top with grated parmesan cheese and serve with rolls.

Notes

We’ve changed up a few things from the original recipe. The original recipe calls for a turnip, but we use squash instead. We also added the roma tomatoes and the parsley.

Variations

Subsitutions: chicken stock for vegetable stock, white beans for kidney beans.

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Source: Rita M. DuCharme-Muskat, Saudi Aramco BBS

Tags: low-fat, vegetarian