You have to admit it, everyone loves Italian food. Clémentine, author of the Instagram account Clemfoodie, understood it well. For today’s recipe, the cooking enthusiast suggests a minestrone – minestra in Italian – in his way. “This is not the traditional Italian recipe but it contains vegetables and small pastas for a dish rich in flavor.“, she comments. Indeed, the culinary author Angelo Pellegrini affirmed that the base of minestrone is a bean broth and that the borlotti (also called roman beans)”are the beans to use for real minestrone“.
A warm and comforting recipe
The advantage with this type of recipe is that we can always modify it with what we have in our cupboards. Vegetables vary according to the seasons, pasta replaced by white beans or rice. It is even possible to vary the spices and herbs.
The list of ingredients for 2 people:
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 1 onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika
- 5 berry pepper mix
- 2 carrots
- 3 handfuls of baby spinach
- 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
- 500-600 ml vegetable stock
- 150 grams of ditali (or orzo) pasta
- 1/2 lemon
- Salt
- 40 g of parmesan
- Fresh parsley
The steps of the recipe:
- Slice the onion and garlic.
- Peel the carrots and cut them into slices.
- Cut the stems of the spinach shoots if they are too long.
- Heat a frying pan with a drizzle of olive oil.
- Add the garlic, onion, paprika and ground pepper and sauté for 3-4 minutes over high heat.
- Then add the carrots, spinach leaves and tomato paste. Brown everything for another 2 minutes.
- Then pour in the broth, a dash of lemon juice and add the pasta. Salt. The broth must cover the pasta and vegetables well. Reduce the heat a little (to medium-high heat) and simmer for about 8 minutes (adjust depending on the cooking time of the pasta).
- Serve in bowls with fresh parsley and grated parmesan on top. Enjoy!
How to store minestrone?
Several options are possible. If you plan to consume it quickly, keep it in the refrigerator. Let the soup cool completely, then transfer it to an airtight container. Minestrone is generally stored up to three to four days in the refrigerator.
If you want to keep minestrone longer, the freezer is the best option. Let the soup cool completely, then pour it into containers suitable for freezing. It will keep for 2 to 3 months.