Hearty Vegetable Soup (aka, Makeshift Minestrone)

Monday, April 2, 2012

Would you prefer watching a video? Check out the cooking video showing me making a variation of this soup here. Start with leftovers and it only takes about fifteen minutes!

I’m hoping is to post something everyday this week with an eye towards keeping things brief, as I’m all too aware of the myriad interesting things that fly across your screen and vie for your attention. That said, it’s important for me to continue building a solid repertoire and boy is there lots to cover! (See how this entire paragraph is just a waste of space and time? Apparently I’m even verbose when writing about about being succinct.)

I should have part two of the squash soup video posted tomorrow, as my battle with iMovie has continued and it’s still kicking my … winning.  In the meantime, here’s another soup idea for you. It’s something to the effect of a tomato-based veggie soup slash makeshift minestrone. On Saturday it was more precisely billed as “it’s cold and rainy-I want soup-what can I make to use up the final bits of last week’s produce.” That’s obviously far too long for a soup name, so let’s just go ahead and call it hearty veggie soup. Perfect for Meatless Monday, too!

What You Need

I began with about 1 c of leftover tomato sauce, which can be a starting point for such things as tomato soup or chili. I was initially planning on making a velvety cream of tomato soup. However, I had all sorts of veggie remains, including 1/2 celery root, 1/2 poblano pepper, 1/2 c store-bought veggie juice, 6 small tomatoes, a few cups of mixed greens, and various herbs. I also had whole wheat elbow macaroni in the pantry. Onions, garlic, and parmigiania cheese are always on hand in my house. Starting to sound like minestrone, yes?  It basically is minestrone without the white beans, which I didn’t have.

What To Do

Heat a few tbsp of olive oil (or canola, if you prefer). Add chopped pepper and onion (1/2 or whole) and diced celery root. Sprinkle with ~1/4 tsp salt (if you like) and ground pepper. While cooking over medium heat 6-8 minutes, chop the tomatoes. Next, add several cloves of crushed garlic (2-4) and stir for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Add leftover tomato sauce and fresh tomatoes and allow the mixture to come together for 5 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Add ~1 c veggie juice and 3-4 c stock, a bit at a time. I used no-sodium bouillon as my stocks were frozen; I always have bouillon on hand for this reason. Don’t add the stock all at once because you don’t want the soup to become too thin and dilute all the flavors.  If you have a parmigiana rind, you can add that, too. Stir, bring to a boil, and turn down to simmer.

Prepare your pasta. Cook it slightly less than al dente as it will continue to cook when added to the soup. Do try whole grain pasta if you haven’t before – this soup is the perfect place to do so, and I’ll bet you can’t even taste a difference. While the pasta is cooking, chop your herbs; I used parsley, rosemary, and thyme. After adding all that, I remembered I had a few cups of salad greens left (spinach, arugula, and mesclun) so I chopped those up and added that, too. Give it a stir.

Mix in the macaroni, and simmer for ~5 minutes or until the pasta is cooked to your liking, Add a bit more starchy pasta water / stock / juice to thin out, taste, and adjust the seasonings as needed. Dried herbs have a more intense flavor than fresh herbs, and even with about 1/4 c parsley and a few springs of both rosemary and thyme, I found I needed ~1 tsp each dried oregano and basil and additional black pepper. You can add a pinch of crushed red pepper at this point, too, for a kick. Often with these big Italian flavors you don’t need a lot of salt, so try adjusting with herbs before adding more sodium.

Want more cooking details? Check out this video.

So much for brevity. Sigh. Ah, well. There’s always tomorrow, she says hopefully..