Minestrone Soup
Ingredients
- Olive Oil
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 2 white onions
- 5 sticks of celery
- 5 carrots
- 4 leeks
- 3 courgettes
- 1/2 a Savoy cabbage
- 1 small swede
- 20 French beans
- 1 tin borlotti or cannellini beans
- 1 jar of passatta (sieved or pulped tomatoes)
- 1/2 tube of sun dried tomato paste
- 1/2 jar of pesto
- 1/2 tablespoon of dried oregano
- 2 bay leaves
- App 2 and a half litres of stock (veg, chicken or ham)
Method
Cut all the veg into bite sized pieces, sweat all the veg except the courgettes with the garlic in some olive oil in a large pan until starting to soften but not colour. Add the stock, passatta, herbs, pesto, beans, and any other ingredients I have forgotten to mention and simmer for app one hour. Serve with chunks of fresh bread and Parmesan Cheese.
You can add a couple of gammon steaks cut into bite sized pieces at the beginning to make it a little more substantial and the beans can be replaced with short pasta. If you decide on pasta add it 20 mins before the soup is cooked.