I make soup

Normally when I go farmers' market shopping, I don't have an "agenda" in mind. I'm looking, smelling , seeing what's good, what's coming into season, what's going out, and thinking about connections. For example, there's pork chops in the freezer: what would go with them (potatoes and hot red peppers), something like that.

Today, playing hooky from work, I had a bit of an agenda. While Guy's chorus is in session, I make a pot of soup every week. That's what we have for supper on Mondays: soup, salad, and something like a quiche, or pizza, or a sandwich, you get the idea. And with the change in weather, minestrone was on my mind.

Now, you can talk to 200 cooks, and get 200 different minestrone recipes. In fact, you can come to our place for minestrone 3-4 times a year, and you'll get something different every time. But today, I came back with things from the market, with the soup in mind. In fact, in some ways it was market shopping at its finest, because of a change I had to make.

I love cabbage. And minestrone with cabbage is sublime. But all I could find at the market were heads of cabbage that weighed upwards of five pounds. WAY TOO MUCH. But Nivea, my goddess of vegetables, had escarole. Little tiny heads of sweet escarole. Escarole is a wonderful ingredient to soup, so home it came. She also had fresh shell beans, one of the delights of farmers' markets, and home they came too.

I already had shell beans in the freezer, so I used those, knowing I had a new stash. The rest is all stuff that anyone should have in the kitchen at any given time. It's absurdly easy to make this soup. And it's absurdly easy to make a lot, as this "recipe" does. I made five quarts. Soup is supposed to be shared, with people you love. There's no easier way to say it than with a bowl of hot soup. Share some love. Here it comes.


1 bunch of carrots, scraped and cut into coins
4 stalks of celery , sliced thin
2 large onions, chopped
2 large cans of whole tomatoes, juice and tomatoes (crush the tomatoes with your hands. Don't bother with canned crush tomatoes, and don't scrimp here. Buy the best ones you can. A "large can" is 28 or 35 ounces).

2 cups of fresh shell beans ( really try to get these. Yes, they are a pain in the neck to shell, but they are so good. If you really, truly can't, you can use a 16 ounce can of beans, but try to get low salt, and wash that nasty stuff off of them.

Vegetables: (here, all I can give you is guidelines, but you want about 8 cups in total. I had three of those large, watery zucchini, some green beans that were going to go bad real soon, and my escarole. I chopped the zucchini into cubes, tipped the green beans and broke them into bite size pieces, and sliced the escarole into thin bits. But you should use what is available and what you like).

Rind from parmesan cheese (this may be the most important ingredient in the soup. If you keep parmesan in the house, save the rinds for things like this. If you don't, go to your favorite Italian market and ask for some. If they look at you funny, find another one. If it's a good market, someone will say "ah. Making soup").

1/2 pound of soup pasta ("soup pasta" are the small ones , like stars, or tubettini, the things italian grandmothers called "pastina)

Olive oil

It's a long list of ingredients, but if you think it through , it's not that big a deal, and there's nothing there that's that expensive.

Take a big, and I mean BIG pot, and cover the bottom with olive oil. Heat it up. When you "smell" it getting hot (like the smell when the radiator is on), add the carrots, celery, and the onions, and a BIG tablespoon of salt. Sautee these in the oil, for about five minutes. You just want to soften them up a little. When that has happened, add the tomatoes, the rind, and the beans, and a quart of water. Lower the heat, and cook this for fifteen minutes. While that's happening, bring another pot of water to the boil, add salt, and cook the pasta separately.

After cooking the soup for fifteen minutes, add the rest of the vegetables, and cook for ten minutes. If you happen to have some parsley, chop it up and add that too. Drain the pasta, and wash it in cold water. when the second group of vegetables has cooked for the ten minutes, turn off the heat, and add the pasta and stir.

You can play with this as you like. Sometimes, if I have some pesto, I'll add that. Grated parmesan when I serve it used to feel like a requirement, but now I find myself more and more just drizzling mine with that wonderful gift of God, extravirgin olive oil.

Now, how easy is that? You can eat it the first day, put some away and eat it two days later, when it will be even better, and call up some friends and say "hey I made some soup and I have some extra. Can you use it?" Everyone will t hink you're wonderful, and everyone will think you slaved in the kitchen for hours, but it will be our little secret how easy it was.