Still Life with Soup Tureen, by Oskar Moll.
Recipe below: Minestrone with Pumpkin, Parsnip, Borlotti Beans, and Rosemary
Minestrone, the big chunky vegetable soup of Italy, is traditionally cooked long and slow for a uniform flavor that many people find comforting. Not me. There’s something about that sour long-boiled vegetable taste that turns me off. The minestrone of my childhood, both Progresso and homemade, was so disappointing, bland, boring. And I wasn’t crazy about the soup’s look and texture either. I cook my minestrone hard and fast. My grandmother would definitely not approve. Her summer minestrone was soft and greenish brown from its zucchini, yellow squash, and string beans, with a suggestion of maroon from its long-cooked backyard tomato. I know long-cooked vegetables are a Southern Italian thing, the idea being to try to coax nuances out of the vegetables. But you reach a point of diminishing returns, and my people have crossed it many times. My family used to cook broccoli rabe down to practically a purée. I haven’t made it that way for decades. Why grow or buy beautiful vegetables and then go boil the crap out of them?
I’m not saying a minestrone should be al dente. That would be completely un-Italian. You do need to release flavor with cooking. I’m looking for the perfect sweet spot of tender but not falling apart. This is especially important with pumpkin, butternut squash, and sweet potato, all of which disintegrate into a mush with almost no encouragement. I like having the beautifully colored little bits of vegetable collapse in my mouth, not in my bowl. The cooking time for this is only about half an hour. I think my grandmother let hers go through a whole afternoon of soap operas.
I served this fall soup topped with a spoonful of parsley sage pesto. I thought that was a nice match with the rosemary. If you’d like to give it a try, you can find my recipe for the pesto here.
Minestrone with Pumpkin, Parsnip, Borlotti Beans, and Rosemary
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 ¼-pound chunk of pancetta, cut into small cubes
1 large onion, diced
2 celery stalks, cut into medium dice, plus their leaves, lightly chopped
¼ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
3 carrots, cut into medium dice
1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into medium dice
3 parsnips, peeled and cut into medium dice
1½ cups chopped pumpkin or butternut squash (chopped to about the same size as all the other vegetables)
6 medium rosemary sprigs, the leaves chopped
6 thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
2 fresh bay leaves
Salt
Black pepper
½ cup dry vermouth
1 quart homemade chicken broth
1 15-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes, well chopped
1 1-pound bag Rancho Gordo cranberry beans, cooked until just tender and then drained
A drizzle of rice wine vinegar, if needed
Get out a big soup pot, and drizzle into it about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Get it hot over medium heat, and then add the pancetta, letting it release its fat and crisp up a bit. Add the onion, celery plus leaves, nutmeg, and carrot, and let cook for about 4 minutes. Add the sweet potato, parsnip, pumpkin or butternut squash, half of the rosemary and thyme, and both bay leaves. Season with salt and black pepper, and let sauté, stirring everything around occasionally, for another 5 minutes.
Add the vermouth, and let it bubble away. Add the chicken broth and the tomatoes. Bring to a boil, and then turn the heat down just a touch, and cook, uncovered, at a medium boil, until the vegetables are all just tender, about 15 minutes. You’ll probably need to skim the surface at this point.
Add all the beans and enough warm water to achieve a medium loose soup consistency. Let cook for about another 5 minutes. Taste for a good balance of flavors, adding a tiny drizzle of rice wine vinegar, if needed, to bring up the acidity.
Add the remaining herbs and taste for seasoning, adding more salt or black pepper, if needed. Add a drizzle of fresh olive oil.
Serve hot or warm, with or without the sage parsley pesto. If you don’t use the pesto, you might like to top each bowl with a grating of grana Padano cheese.