Minestrone, a Hearty Winter Warm Up

2017 Minestrone

My hunt for a seriously good minestrone recipe continues, both in casual dining restaurants and in my own kitchen at home. Some days inspiration comes from colorful Pinterest photos or intriguing cookbook recipes, or more often develops as a random, freeform exploration featuring seasonal produce in the fridge. This week's version, an adaptation of Ina Garten's Hearty Winter Minestrone, was declared a success. Not surprising since Ina's recipes rarely disappoint. You'll find her original recipe online here and in her 2012 cookbook Barefoot Contessa Foolproof.

I took some liberties with the ingredient list, added a few vegetables and omitted others, changed the pasta, used leftover prosecco rather than white wine... and it was still delicious. Adaptability is what makes minestrone such an amazing soup, but don't just take my word for it.

"If all were right in the world, there would be as many recipes for minestrone - the Italian soup of simmered vegetables and beans- as there have been individual pots of it cooked. That's because it's really more of a process than a fixed recipe." J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

Read more of Kenji's lengthy but interesting Food Lab treatise on minestrone here for some history, basic technique, ingredient suggestions, and a kettleful of researched fact and opinion.

My previous minestrone soups varied widely in flavor and ingredients, some more successful than others, and have combined fresh, frozen and boxed or canned ingredients. Perhaps incorporating dried beans and their cooking liquid will boost the next  kettle of soup to the next level of layered flavors. For now, I'm happy to work with this recipe again. Thanks for the inspiration, Ina, and thanks, Kenji for the encouragement to stray from a written recipe.
   

2015 Minestrone

2013 Minestrone

2012 Minestrone

2011 Minestrone 

2010 Minestrone

A 2017 Winter Minestrone

from an Ina Garten recipe

serves 6 to 8

Ingredients
2 Tablespoons olive oil

4 strips of thick-sliced bacon, chopped

1 large yellow onion, chopped

2 cups carrots, chopped

4 large stalks celery, chopped
1 sweet pepper, chopped (I used a poblano instead)

2 Tablespoons garlic, peeled & chopped

2 teaspoons Italian herb mix (Penzeys)

1 heaping teaspoon dried basil

2 15-ounce cans diced tomatoes with juice

8 cups low-sodium chicken stock, divided

1 bay leaf

salt and pepper, to taste

1 can small white beans, drained & rinsed

2 cups cabbage, chopped (I used Napa)

1 medium zucchini, chopped

1 cup green beans, chopped (I used frozen)

4 cups fresh baby spinach, loosely packed

1/2 cup white wine (I used prosecco, because it was open)

2 cups cooked small pasta, tubes or small shells

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, &/or a gremolata mix of parsley, garlic and lemon zest for serving

Directions

1. Use a large, heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven and heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add bacon and cook until lightly browned but not crisp. 

2. Add the onion, carrots, celery, pepper, garlic, Italian herbs and basil to the pot and cook until the vegetables begin to soften.

3. Add tomatoes with their juices, 6 cups of chicken stock and the bay leaf. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer uncovered until vegetables are tender.

4. Add white beans, cabbage, zucchini and green beans; cook until heated through and cabbage is slightly softened. Add remaining chicken broth as needed, though minestrone should be fairly thick.

Taste and adjust seasonings (typically more salt and occasionally some hot sauce).

5. Add the wine and spinach; stir in until greens wilt. 

6. Spoon equal portions of cooked pasta, about 1/3 cup each, into individual soup bowls; ladle the soup over the the pasta. Top each with Parmesan and/or gremolata and serve.

Pesto Tapenade... or Tapenade Pesto

Artichoke Pesto Tapenade in a Grilled Cheese Sandwich - SRC Reveal

Salty, savory bites are my favorites, no question about that, so those flavors were the drivers in my search for this month's Secret Recipe Club choice. I enjoyed browsing through nearly 4 years worth of Corina's posts at my assigned site, Searching for Spice, a UK blog packed chock full of sweet and savory items. Some sweets, like Rocky Road Squares, did tempt me, and I'll revisit them for the holidays. Corina's Cardamom and Pistachio Ice Cream sounded divine too, but this month I focused on her many savory recipes. Two fish preparations were strong contenders, one a Jamie Oliver recipe for white fish cooked with spinach, olives and tomatoes, and another for fish baked en papillote with olives and lemon. Olives drew my attention again in a tapenade. I sense a pattern there. Unable to decide between recipes for pesto and tapenade, I took the easy route and combined elements of both, adding a few extras along the way. It sounds a bit random, but it worked.   

What's the difference between pesto and tapenade? I Googled both terms and found the following at PoshGourmet:

Pesto [PEH-stoh] — This uncooked, herbal sauce comes from Genoa. Classic method is to combine crushed or chopped fresh basil, pine nuts, parmesan cheese and olive oil. 

Tapenade [TA-puh-nahd; ta-pe-AHD] — This tasty thick paste comes from Provence. The ‘classic’ ingredients are capers, anchovies, ripe olives, olive oil, lemon juice, and seasonings. It is classified as a condiment.

First up was the tapenade, a chunky mix of green and black olives, capers, fresh basil, lemon zest and juice plus a lot of garlic. Anchovies are traditional, and I do love them in dressings and on pizza, but the saltiness of this mix was already over the top. So I skipped the anchovies and added a dollop of Dijon mustard and a sprinkling of dried Italian herbs instead.

  

After a few quick pulses in a food processor the tapenade was almost what I was looking for - tangy with a bit of a bite. More fresh basil, some toasted pine nuts, a jar of marinated artichoke hearts and a cloud of grated Parmesan cheese joined the party, followed by a few drizzles of olive oil. Mix. Taste. Smile. Adding those traditional pesto ingredients moved the flavors along to a brighter result, less of a one-note, overly-salty, olivey taste. Oh yes, this final combination was seriously delicious!

So what do I call this merging of recipes - pesto or tapenade? Is it a sauce or a condiment? Italian or French? My Artichoke Basil Olive Pesto Tapenade is definitely not a classic...  anything. Who cares?! It is deliciously habit-forming, an assertive, flavorful treat. Yesterday it starred as a quick and easy Pesto Tapenade Sauce for pasta at lunch. Delicioso!

Today it was a Tapenade Pesto Spread that lifted an ordinary grilled cheese sandwich to a whole new level. Scrumptious! 

Use Artichoke Pesto Tapenade to build a muffuletta sandwich, or top a cracker or liven up some crostini. Try it as a pizza topping or ... well, whatever, be adventurous and try it in your galley. 

Artichoke Pesto Tapenade

inspired by 2 recipes from Corina at SearchingforSpice

3 oz pitted green olives
5 oz pitted Kalamata olives
2 Tbs capers, drained & rinsed
2 - 3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
zest and juice of 1 small lemon 
large handful of fresh basil, roughly torn or chopped
1 Tbs Dijon mustard
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted in skillet until fragrant
1 small jar marinated artichoke hearts, drained & roughly chopped
a generous pinch of dried Italian Seasoning (blend your favorites)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
2 - 3 Tbs olive oil (more or less as needed)

Place all ingredients except cheese and olive oil in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse in short bursts until the pieces are roughly the same size, adding olive oil as needed to hold the mix together. Stir in the cheese with a spoon or spatula. Be careful not to overprocess or you will end up with an olive paste, still tasty but really ugly.

Taste and adjust to suit your palate. 
Note: To sauce pasta you may want to add more olive oil to loosen it up, perhaps add some hot pasta water to the tossed pasta and tapenade if you like it even saucier. 

Mostly Minestrone Soup

A bowl of Italian restaurant minestrone was a disappointment earlier this week and I was left craving a good bowl of minestrone soup. I wanted something hearty but not too heavy, robust without any one flavor note dominating the taste. Generations of Italian families have created countless versions of this soup, so how difficult could it be? Hah! more difficult than it seems when you begin with an ideal taste in your mind, no family recipe to fall back on, and w-a-y too many variations available online. 

Today's kitchen experiment was one step closer to a really good bowl of soup, with no claim to it being authentic Italian. This was a spur of the moment creation and I didn't bother to take any notes on ingredients or procedure as I went along. The result was surprisingly good, so here is a close approximation of what went into today's Mostly Minestrone Soup. This may not be the ultimate recipe I've been searching for (link), but today it was just fine, thank you.

Do you have a minestrone soup recipe to recommend?

Mostly Minestrone

2 tablespoons bacon grease, or canola oil
   (I cooked 2 bacon strips and added the bacon to the soup along with the beans) 

2 links Italian or Andouille sausage, in thin coins or crumbled

½ medium onion, diced

½ red bell pepper, diced

1 large stalk celery, diced
1 large carrot, diced

1 heaping teaspoon mixed Italian herbs

4 cups tomatoes, chopped
   (I used cherry tomatoes that needed to be used immediately)

3 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1 cup beef broth

1 bay leaf
several chunks of Parmesan rind

juice & zest of 1 small lemon

1 can cannellini beans, or any white bean

1 cup green beans cut into short lengths

2 cups (packed) fresh baby spinach leaves

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Add per each bowl, to serve:

handful of cooked short tube pasta

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Shredded parmesan cheese

1. Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed pot over medium; add sausage coins and cook until browned on both sides but not crisp. Use a slotted spoon to remove the sausage and set aside.
2. Add the onion, red pepper, celery and carrots to the sausage-flavored oil in the same pan and cook to soften but not brown. Add the Italian herbs and stir to mix. 
3. Add the tomato chunks and any juices; cook until the tomatoes break down (maybe 10 minutes), stirring occasionally. Add the broths, parmesan rind and bay leaf; simmer uncovered over medium-low heat for 20 minutes.
4. Add the lemon, green beans and spinach and gently simmer for another 5 minutes to heat through.
5. Taste and adjust seasonings.
6. To serve: Add a handful of cooked pasta to each bowl. Ladle in some broth to warm the pasta; add some solids and more broth. Top with a splash of balsamic vinegar and a sprinkle of parmesan.

Notes: 
1. The soup needed a bit more liquid so I added a ladle of the pasta cooking water to the pot when I added the beans and spinach. It didn't seem to affect the flavor, but next time I might add more broth earlier.
2. Top each bowl with fresh basil or Italian parsley for a fresh flavor pop.

A Hit and a Miss at Pizzeria Pulcinella

The continuing search for a terrific minestrone soup...

We are now approaching classic soup weather in the Pacific Northwest. You know the signs; it's a season of cool temperature, dark clouds, drizzly rain, plus wind-gusts-to-rattle-the-windows kind of a weather all mixed with glorious days of cool sunshine.  Mmmmm, minestrone soup kind of weather. Lunch at a favorite Italian joint, Pizzeria Pulcinella, should have been the perfect antidote for any dreary weather blues. Well, it almost worked. 

Pulcinella's Neopolitan pizzas and delicious salads have become our go-to favorites, but the daily lunch sheet looked way too tempting to pass up. I'll admit I arrived primed to enjoy a steaming bowl of minestrone, anticipating a tomato-based broth loaded with seasonal vegetables, beans and a handful of pasta.Then again, the panini did sound amazing. The plan was to order a two different items and share both. So I ordered the panini and RL went for the bowl of minestrone with foccaccia. 

We did share my panini, a crisped focaccia thickly layered with various meats and cheeses that was a full-flavored delight. The large serving was more than enough for the two of us.

The much anticipated house minestrone should have been the real treat, but didn't deliver. It looked unappealingly murky with no evidence of any tomatoes, winter greens or pasta. Moving past the visual I dove into RL's bowl for a taste test.  The first spoonful of broth lacked flavor, and a second spoonful confirmed the bland taste. It was an okay chicken-broth based cabbagey soup, but it wasn't the minestrone I was after. so I graciously let RL enjoy the rest of the bowl.  The attentive waitress offered soup refills, but we politely declined. 

Pulcinella remains on the list of good local pizzerias, and we will return again and again for pizza and salad. However, the minestrone soup search goes on. It might be time to try another recipe at home.

Pizza Pasta

aka Friday Fettuccini

Some days are meant to be enjoyed as “do nothing, goof off, read a book and grab another cuppa” kind of days. Last Friday was one of those days… or maybe I was just too lazy. Whatever the reason, I did loaf about and read for most of the day, snacked on fruit and cheese for lunch, and ignored dinner prep until the very last minute. I had planned to make pizza, but that sounded like too much trouble; homemade dough would take too long, the oven would really heat up the boat on an already warm day… or maybe I was just too lazy.

Pizza Pasta came to the rescue, utilizing some already-cooked fettuccini and the usual sausage, tomato, black olives, fresh herbs and cheese pizza toppings already on hand. This dish was dee-licious, even better than pizza, and so tasty that RL insisted I record the recipe immediately, before I forgot ingredients and quantities. 

I won, this was a day when being lazy was a good thing.   

Friday Fettuccini 

Serves 2

2 TBS olive oil

1 soft chorizo (I used a 10" link from a Vancouver Island supplier)

4 slices cotto salami

3 large cloves garlic, peeled & smashed

1 TBS capers

3 green onions, sliced into rings

1 tsp dried basil

1 dozen cherry tomatoes, halved

¼ cup black olives, sliced

2 TBS lemon juice

handful fresh Italian parsley, rough chopped

handful fresh basil, julienned

freshly grated Parmesan at finish

grated lemon zest, optional

handful of fettuccini, enough for two servings, cooked until just tender

1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Remove the chorizo from its casing and crumble into the skillet; cook until it releases some fat and is no longer pink, but definitely not until crispy.
2. Add the salami and garlic to the pan; cook for a minute or two until fragrant.
3. Reduce the heat to medium and add the capers, green onions, dried basil, cherry tomatoes, black olives and lemon juice. Stir or toss to mix, cover the skillet and cook for several minutes to soften the tomatoes and heat through.
4. Add two servings of cooked fettuccini plus several tablespoons of pasta water and toss to coat all strands with the olive oil sauce. (If using precooked pasta from the refrigerator like I did today, cover and cook a few minutes longer to warm the fettuccini. Add additional olive oil as needed to loosen the sauce.) Add the fresh parsley and basil to the pan and toss again.
5. Serve in individual pasta bowls, twisting the strands into mounded nests, spooning the meaty sauce over the pasta. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan and lemon zest if using.