Minestrone!

Minestrone! Who Knew?!

A recipe from our old Starving Artists on Live Journal--from 2010!  It sounds good, even though it is more a wintry soup.

We’ve been cleaning house and digging through the mess that’s our storage room, allowing me to FINALLY get at my old bookcase. It’s been with me since I lived on our farm–as well as most of the books in it. What fun! Like meeting up with old friends...

I was delighted to find not only the original 1954 compilation of my favorite cooking author of all time, M.F.K. Fisher (The Art of Eating, now out in a 50th Anniversary edition) but the original 1942 war-years How to Cook a Wolf. I LOVED that book when I first discovered it in the 70's. (And hang in there, I'll be mentioning it more in coming articles!)

Fisher writes with humor, courage, and common sense, and not a trace of self-pity for hard times and making do. (Both books are in better condition than many new books, and just as timely.)

What to do when the wolf’s at the door? (A feeling some of us know rather well, at times...)

COOK IT, of course!

So what does that have to do with minestrone? It’s a hearty peasant soup, and inexpensive to make, but I always thought I didn’t care for that particular dish. I’ve tried it in numerous places, and my response was generally a resounding "MEH."

Her recipe DID sound good, though, and I had most of the ingredients on hand, since it just calls for bits of this and that...and it was a gray, cold winter day just begging for a hot bowl of soup...

She says you can add beans (white or navy-style) OR NOT, and add pasta OR NOT, so since the minestrones I’ve tried always had both, I decided to give the OR NOT recipe a shot.

Oh. My.

It was HEAVENLY.

I’d just made a stir-fry, and had scraps of outer cabbage leaves, onion, carrot, celery tops and more left...rather than waste it, I started a soup stock. We had about a cup of organic tomato/squash soup left in the fridge, so I threw that in, too...plus a spoonful of the Beef Base I’ve talked about here before.

Sooooooooo...we had a head start. When I drained out the vegetables, the resulting stock was already pretty luscious. That was the deciding factor–minestrone it was!

And here it is...tweaked to my own kitchen, of course:

The Basics

½ lb. good bacon (we use nitrite and nitrate-free stuff) or a piece of salt pork diced or leftover fat ham.
1 small onion or ½ large one, chopped
1 stalk chopped celery
2 C. Tomatoes, diced (OR 1 can of those gorgeous all-natural fire-roasted diced tomatoes)
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1 handful chopped parsley, if fresh or 1 T. Dried
1 t. oregano
1 t. sweet basil
or a nice shake of Tuscan Sunset, from Penzey’s Spices, yum, or your favorite Italian herb mixture
(I had some of our homegrown parsley to throw in--I'd chopped and frozen it last fall...)

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Sauté the meat to render out a bit of fat; crumble bacon and set aside, and put the vegetables in the meat fat to glaze and soften.

Add the tomatoes and their juice to a big saucepan or stockpot, and add the vegetables and crumbled bacon/salt pork/ham.

Fisher says to stir in 2-3 quarts of water, but if you’ve got a good soup stock, as I did, add that instead. I added a can of all natural beef stock, too. Simmer, while you:

Put the below veggies through a vegetable grinder, Cuisinart, or just chop them with a sharp knife, which is what I did. I’m not big on noise, and I like to sit and chop...

1 more big onion (or two, we like onion, too!)
1 potato, skins and all, or a couple of small, tender young red ones, which I did
1-2 cloves garlic (Of COURSE I used 2. Big ones!)
½ small cabbage
3 carrots, if you like them–I do, J doesn’t, much, so I just used the half cup of chopped ones we had on hand
2-3 more stalks of celery

handful of spinach, if you have it
handful of green beans, ditto

(I had neither, so I didn’t add them...)

(And no, I don't know why this is in two stages...Fisher said to do it, so I did!)

She didn’t say to do this, but since I had the skillet handy, I sautéd the rest of the veggies before adding them to the soup pot...seemed to make them richer tasting. A nut-sized chunk of butter (I always wanted to say that! NOT a peanut. More an English walnut in the shell...) added to the pan gave me enough fat to fry them in, too.

Er, “sauté’” Forget I said fry...just lightly browned and softened...

I popped them in the pot and let it simmer 45 minutes or so, with a lid...no salt needed, actually, but I added a quick grinding of sea salt to my bowl...

If you’ve got other leftover veggies, throw them in too...I think almost anything but parsnips (which I love but might be a little too sweet) would work, here...leftover squash? Sure. Bell peppers? Why not. I had three little limp green onions left from our enchiladas the other night–I cut them into rounds and into the pot they went!

When the soup was done we ladled into gorgeous handmade bowls we got for Christmas, made by Jeff Walker, a local potter http://www.bestofmissourihands.com/jeffwalker.htm . (If you’re in the neighborhood, you can find it in Excelsior Springs, MO, at Willow Springs Mercantile, because I didn’t do it justice, it was full of soup!)

We topped it with a small handful–er, all right, a generous handful–of leftover pizza cheese and the grated Asiago, Parmesan, Romano mixture we love, and let it melt.  Nothing else was necessary, though you might like a small salad...

Thank you, M.F.K. Fisher! I didn’t exactly use her recipe, but I learned that Minestrone can be REALLY GOOD.

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The painting is watercolor on Fabriano soft press watercolor paper, with just a touch of ink here and there...I got  to use the gorgeous new brushes recommended by my dear friend Laura Frankstone in this post: laurelines.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/12/what-i-loved-in-... I am SO pleased with them! As she says, they hold lots of paint and have killer points...they just DANCE!

**You can find more on these brushes, as well as M.F.K. Fisher's lovely The Art of Eating, in my Amazon store, here: http://astore.amazon.com/httpcathyjohi-20 --and yes, I do earn a tiny commission on anything you buy from my store or anything else you choose while you're there!  I ONLY put things in my store that I personally own or love, nobody sends me things to review or other freebies, so you know I'm honest about it!

Herb Encrusted Rib-Eye

First of all, get good meat.  We get ours from Whole Foods but what you don’t want is the feed lot raised stuff.  You’ll need two rib-eye steaks, about two inches thick (1-1 ½ pounds each). Yes, the picture is of a roast: this recipe will also work very well with small (3-5 lb) roasts or prime rib. Kate's sketch is of a beautiful Christmas roast from a couple of years ago.

Glaze:

2 large or 3 small garlic cloves, minced

2 T Dijon mustard

2 T lemon juice

2 T extra virgin olive oil

2 T Worcestershire sauce (Note: I now use Pickapeppa sauce to avoid high fructose corn syrup.)

Herb Mixture:

2 T Herbs de Provence

1 T parsley flakes

1 tsp dried minced garlic

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper

1 tsp lemon pepper

Directions

Insert a meat thermometer into each steak – this helps with handling as well as allowing you to determine when they’re done.  Combine the glaze ingredients and pour over steaks, being sure to cover them thoroughly.  Combine the herb mixture and sprinkle heavily over each steak, ensuring they are completely covered.  Place steaks on a rack in an ungreased roasting pan and bake uncovered at 325° for about 45-50 minutes or until meat reaches desired doneness.  Remove to a warm serving platter. Let stand for 10-15 minutes before serving.

Serves four.

Notes:

1.  The herb mixture can be prepared in larger quantities and stored in a glass jar.

2.  The glaze can also be prepared ahead and refrigerated – just be sure to return it to room temperature before using.

3.  I cook these in our little convection toaster oven that has a tray that sits below the rack.  Rather than remove them to a serving platter I simply turn the oven off to let them rest.  This works just fine and also keeps the cats away from them.