Olivier Poels 5:40 p.m., June 22, 2022
Widely associated with Italian cuisine, minestrone may not have originated there.
There remains a debate on its origin: Italian for some, Swiss for others.
We know that the humble Romans ate a lot of vegetable broths.
They put in what they had on hand: beans, carrots, lentils, mushrooms, cabbage.
Over the centuries, conquests, discoveries, we have changed the list of ingredients;
rice, tomatoes and potatoes, for example, arrived from the 16th century.
There is not one but a multitude of minestrone recipes: depending on the families, regions and seasons.
In the North-West of Italy: add mushrooms, aubergines and pesto
In Tuscany: small pasta
In Lombardy: rice
Abruzzo: bacon
To cool off in summer, you can prepare a cold minestrone.
Minestrone comes from “minestare”: to put on a table, the term appeared in the 19th century.
Minestrone recipe
Ingredients :
100 g white beans
100 g of green beans
100 g split peas
1 carrot
1 onion
1 zucchini
2 tomatoes
1 clove of garlic
50 g of vermicelli
100 g of grated parmesan
1 bunch of basil
Olive oil
20 g of pine nuts
Cook the white beans for 30 minutes in a large volume of water
Cut all the vegetables into small cubes
Brown all the vegetables except the green beans in olive oil
Moisten with 1.5 liters of water and simmer for 40 minutes
10 min before the end add the green beans, the white beans and the vermicelli
Mix the basil with the parmesan, pine nuts and olive oil to obtain a pesto
Serve hot or cold with the pesto