Marcella’s Minestrone

This fantastic recipe is from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Marcella says it best, “At home, in my native Romagna, this is the way we make minestrone. To seasonal vegetables we add the always available staples – carrots, onions, potatoes – and cook them in good broth over slow heat for hours. The result is a soup of dense, mellow flavor that recalls no vegetable in particular, but all of them at once. Note that the ingredients do not go into the pot at one time, but in a sequence that is indicated. By first sautéing the onion you produce the essential underlying flavor, which is then imparted to the other vegetables in turn. While one vegetable is cooking, you can peel and cut up another, a more efficient and less tedious method than preparing all the vegetables at once.”

Ingredients

• 1 lb. fresh zucchini
• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup onion, sliced very thin
• 1 cup carrots, diced
• 1 cup celery, diced
• 2 cups potatoes, peeled and diced
• ¼ lb. fresh green beans
• 3 cups shredded Savoy cabbage or regular cabbage
• 1½ cups canned cannellini beans, drained
• 6 cups Basic Homemade Meat Broth, OR 2 cups canned beef broth and 4 cups water (I used homemade vegetable broth)
• OPTIONAL: the crust from a 1- to 2-lb. piece of
  parmigiano-reggiano cheese, carefully scraped clean
• 2/3 cup canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, with their juice
• Salt to taste (I ended up adding about 1½-2 tsp with unsalted broth)
• 1/3 cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese

Instructions

1. Soak the zucchini in a large bowl filled with cold water for at least 20 minutes, then rinse them clean of any remaining grit. Trim both ends on each zucchini and dice the zucchini fine.
2. Choose a stockpot that can comfortably accommodate all the ingredients. Put in the oil, butter, and sliced onion and turn on the heat to medium low. Cook the onion in the uncovered pot until it wilts and becomes colored a pale gold, but no darker.
3. Add the diced carrots and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring once or twice. Then add the celery, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 or 3 minutes. Add the potatoes, repeating the same procedure. While the carrots, celery, and potatoes are cooking, soak the green beans in cold water, rinse, snap off both ends, and dice them. Add the diced green beans to the pot, and when they have cooked for 2 or 3 minutes, add the zucchini.
4. Continue to give all ingredients an occasional stir and, after another few minutes, add the shredded
5. cabbage. Continue cooking for another 5 or 6 minutes.
6. Add the broth, the optional cheese crust, the tomatoes with their juice, and a sprinkling of salt. If using canned broth, salt lightly at this stage, and taste and correct for salt later on. Give the contents of the pot a thorough stirring. Cover the pot, and lower the heat, adjusting it so that the soup bubbles slowly, cooking at a steady, but gentle simmer.
7. When the soup has cooked for 2½ hours, add the drained cannellini beans, stir well, and cook for at least another 30 minutes. If necessary, you can turn off the heat at any time and resume the cooking later. Cook until the consistency is fairly dense. Minestrone ought never to be thin or watery. If you should find that the soup is becoming too thick before it has finished cooking, you can dilute it a bit with some more homemade broth or, if you started with canned broth, with water.
8. When the soup is done, just before you turn off the heat, remove the cheese crust, swirl in the grated cheese, then taste and correct for salt.

Note

• Minestrone is even better when reheated the following day. It will keep up to a week in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.