Minestrone Primavera (Spring Vegetable Soup)

This is a really lovely soup to make, it is delicious, comforting, easy to prepare, and it is a great choice for a light lunch or dinner. It will soon become one of your favourites as it is ideal for a rustic style meal or for a more elegant option dining.

What I love about this minestrone is that it is really uncomplicated to make and it looks so pretty with all the new vegetables, yes, spring in a plate and a real celebration of springtime.

This soup is Italian in origin and due to such a close geographical proximity of my homeland it became incredibly popular, it is prepared in almost every household on a weekly basis, and because of its healthy and nutritious properties it is a popular choice in nurseries, school canteens, restaurants and nursing homes.

It is also very common to blitz or puree this soup and use it as a baby food.

In Slovenia you can find it in the menus as Zelenjavna Mineštra and in Istrian dialect being referred to as Maneštra.

This spring vegetable soup is quite light but it is very common to turn it into a more substantial meal just by adding a bit of small shaped pasta or rice, barley, freshly cooked or tinned cannellini or other type of beans, chickpeas and similar.

Minestrone Primavera is one of those dishes that was created out of necessity, using what was available in the season. The idea behind this, is that you would go to the vegetable garden during the spring and early summer season and pick the vegetables that were ready to be used in cooking. And this is exactly what my both paternal and maternal grandfathers used to do.

As a alternative, if you do not have a vegetable patch, you can go to the farmers market, food stores or supermarket and pick up the spring vegetable that you like.

The beauty of Spring minestrone is that it can never taste exactly the same, as the selection of vegetables will slightly vary each time you cook it.

My mum would make this soup very frequently especially in the spring and early summer when there are fresh vegetables available in abundance.

There are also quite a lot of regional variations of this dish like Minestrone alla Genovese, a variant typical of Liguria (Italy), that commonly uses fresh basil pesto and a greater amount of fresh herbs.

What gives this humble minestrone a real boost in flavour is to put the end of a Parmiggiano Reggiano or Padano cheese rind into the soup rather than to throw it away. The rind is that part of the cheese that develops on the outside wheel as it ages and acts as a protective layer. When you are no longer able to grate the cheese, as you get to the crust that also becomes quite hard (i.e. the rind), you do not throw the crust away, use it in a soup to enrich it as it is packed full of flavour.

It just transforms the overall taste of the minestrone, as if just by magic, you have to trust me on this one! You will be amazed what an old rind of cheese can do!

This is a poor, peasant soup, my paternal nona shared with me that when she was young ingredients were scarce, and the word abundance was almost hardly ever used when it comes to food. It is quite emotional to think how incredibly clever and creative people were to use everything they could to give them fuller flavour with something that would normally end up in the bin or compost.

Here I will share a basic recipe for the minestrone, just how it has been made in my family for generations and it is just a guide, as there is no set recipe.

Ingredients

Ingredients for soffritto (Italian in origin, it is a flavour base for many dishes, gently fried chopped onions, carrots and celery in olive oil)

• 4 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 1 medium onion, approx. 140g, finely chopped

• 1 medium carrot (finely chopped), use 70g for soffritto and chop the rest of the carrot and use it in a soup together with the other vegetables

• 1 celery stick (approx. 70g), finely chopped

Ideally, the onion, carrot and celery stick should be chopped quite finely when preparing soffritto. If you have a mini food processor, this is the time to use it.

The rest of the ingredients for the soup

• courgette (approx. 100g), a handful, sliced and roughly chopped

• 1 potato (approx 130g), peeled and cut into cubes

• 4 runner beans, washed trimmed and sliced

• 4 green asparagus, wash, trim off the wooden ends and finely slice the stalks leaving the tips whole

• 4-5 radishes, washed and roughly chopped

• 5 broad bean pods, podded

• fresh sweet peas in pods (approx. 150g), remove the peas from the pods (frozen petits pois would do just fine, about a handful)

• baby spinach, about a handful, chopped

• 1 handful fresh flat leaf parsley, stalks included (that is where the flavour is), finely chopped

• 3-4 fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped

• 1 fresh sage leaf

• 2l hot vegetable or chicken stock (using instant stock is perfectly fine). You can just simply use hot water if you do not have any type of stock in hand.

• sea salt (to taste)

• freshly ground black pepper (optional)

• Parmiggiano Reggiano cheese rind (optional)

• 80-100g small shaped pasta or broken up spaghetti

Method

Prepare all your vegetables as described in the Ingredients list above and put it aside.

Drizzle the oil in a casserole pan, add onions, carrots and celery and prepare the soffritto by gently and slowly frying the trio of vegetables for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until soft.

Add all the other vegetables and fry gently together with soffritto for few minutes.

Add all the herbs, stock and cheese rind, if using, and cook for about 40 minutes.

Taste and adjust the seasoning with sea salt and black pepper. If using cheese rind there might be no need for extra seasoning as the cheese rind is quite salty already.

Halfway through cooking add barley, beans (already cooked or canned), rice or any other small shaped pasta you like, very traditional is to use ditalini shape pasta. It is also very common, especially when you realized you have not got any small shaped pasta or completely run out of it, to take a bit of spaghetti and break them up into smaller pieces.

I have lovely memories of my mother giving me this job when I was a child to keep me entertained.

I give this same job to my son today, to keep him entertained...

Serve it hot with freshly grated Parmiggiano Reggiano cheese and bruschetta of your choice.

Wine suggestion

Chardonnay DOC “Vigna Runc” 2019 by Il Carpino, Collio.