MARVELOUS MINESTRONE SOUP

Ok ok. I know i'm on this whole soup kick. But I've discovered it's the best thing to make when you've got a whole lot of produce and don't really know what to do with it. Anyway, it's winter. So remember that Boston Organic's order I got last week? Well, I still had mushrooms, lettuce, carrots and zucchinis left over from it. I couldn't come up with anything creative to make, so I turned to the recipes on foodtv.com and typed in zucchini. At first, I considered making some type of pasta with veggies, but in the end, I found a recipe for minestrone soup. It's by Michael Chiarello and it's pretty easy. (I also liked the fact that the name of the recipe was Super Quick Minestrone). So here are the ingredients below:

1 cup (4 ounces) tubetti pasta, or other small pasta shape
Extra-virgin olive oil
6 cups chicken stock
1/4 pound pancetta, cut into 3 pieces
6 medium garlic cloves, each cut in 1/2 lengthwise
2 cups finely chopped yellow onions (2 small onions)
1 cup small-diced celery (2 medium stalks)
1 cup small-diced carrots (2 to 3 medium carrots)
1 tablespoon finely chopped rosemary or thyme leaves
1 (14-ounce) can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes
4 cups small-diced zucchini (green/yellow) (5 small zucchini)
2 cups small-diced, peeled russet potatoes (1 large russet)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan

I was missing some items and substituted other items. I picked up onions, cannellini beans and garlic at the market and decided to omit the celery, potatoes, pasta and pancetta. (the whole idea was to use up what i already had at home, so i didn't want to be purchasing more stuff unless it was actually necessary). Also, I looked at a few recipes before I picked the Michael Chiarello one, and a lot of ppl added swiss chard, so i figured red leaf lettuce was pretty similar and added that in too. Most of the work for this recipe is involved in chopping everything up. So here are my chopped onion, garlic, carrots and zucchini. First, you want brown your garlic in a heated pan with olive oil. Then you toss in you carrots and onions. Here's a pic of those ingredients cooking away in my pot. You cook those for about 8 minutes, until they're soft.Meanwhile, you heat the chicken stock in a separate pot. When the veggies are soft, you toss in the beans (I picked mini cannellini beans, rather than the bigs ones.) Here's a pic of them below. I learned it's important to rinse these guys off, even where they're coming out of a can, cause in the can, they're surrounded by this very gooey substance and you wanna get rid of that.

and you also toss in the rest of your veggies. In the pic below, i've got my zucchini, mushrooms, lettuce and a can of peel, crushed tomatoes. Now you're supposed to put in a can of peeled diced tomatoes, but i didn't have those, and this turned out fine. and toss in your herb of choice (i used thyme).here's what it all looks like before the tomatoes are added. (colorful, huh?) once i added those, everything turned red. the last step is to add the warmed chicken stock. Then you just bring the whole thing to a boil and it's all done.
Here's the final product in my little bowl. So the best suggestion in this recipe was at the very end, where he suggests that you serve with olive oil and parmesan cheese. let me just say, this is a totally necessary step. I sprinkled on some high quality olive oil (notice the yellow splotches on top) which added a bit of sweetness and complexity to the whole thing and i grated on some pecorino romano cheese (i'm all out of parmesan at home, but this is a good substitute). I was very happy with the results. Lots of fresh veggies in a yummy filling soup and leah enjoyed it too (i brought some to work so she could eat dinner). and it really was super fast and easy. so if you ever have a bunch of veggies lying around and you need to do something with them, try out this recipe. I promise you won't be disappointed.