Tomorrow is my birthday, and ushers in the last year of my sixties.
It's a milestone I suspect none of us is ever ready to face, and is coming at an especially difficult time for my family and for our country. Consequently, that need for comforting soup in my household hasn't lessened; if anything, it's only gotten more pronounced.
Whenever that need becomes acute, the soup that provides it best isn't, oddly enough, one I grew up on, but a classic Italian minestrone. True, it's a kissing cousin of my grandmother's vegetable soup, but its comfort isn't rooted in childhood memories as are most other "comfort foods." When I was traveling to teach a lot, my way of recovering from a circuit was to make a big pot of minestrone. The process was as much a part of the comfort as the eating—which I inevitably did almost entirely by myself.
That pot of minestrone has evolved over the years from Marcella Hazan's incomparable recipe for Minestrone alla Romagnola, which I at first followed to the letter. But as it became automatic, I stopped following anyone's recipe and began to be unconsciously guided by memories of the minestrone that our cook Ilda made for us at our architecture school in Genoa, and of course my grandmother's equally incomparable vegetable soup.
Significantly, all three women's soups had exactly the same structure. Each vegetable is added one at a time to the pot, although my grandmother didn't sweat them in fat as was done by both of the other cooks but added them directly to the simmering broth.
Ilda's and my grandmother's soups had more tomato than Marcella's, and Ilda diced all the vegetables to roughly the same size, whereas Marcella's onions were sliced and her cabbage shredded and MaMa's soup was a hodgepodge of sizes and shapes. MaMa's was also distinguished from minestrone by generous additions of corn and sliced okra.
Ilda's soup was finished with pesto, Marcella's with a handful of freshly grated Parmigiano cheese, and MaMa's with a generous dusting of black pepper.
Dried cannellini beans that you have soaked and precooked are better than canned beans and make a world of difference in this soup, but they've not always been available where I've lived, and I routinely keep cans of cannellini in my pantry, so that is what I mostly use now and they work fine. Instead of cannellini, Ilda used fresh cranberry beans, and MaMa, butterbeans. Either one can be substituted for the cannellini here as can pinto or great northern beans, although of course the flavors will be subtly different.
My Minestrone
Going to the trouble of dicing each vegetable may seem tedious, but the object is that they're all roughly the same size. It's well worth the extra trouble: the flavors blend better and it's much easier to eat.
Serves 6 to 8
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
About 1 large or 1½ medium yellow onions
About 2 large or 3 medium ribs celery
About 2 large or 3 medium carrots
6 ounces (about 1/3 pound) green beans
1 medium or 2 small zucchini
1 small head cabbage
2 medium red skinned potatoes
1 heaped cup frozen green peas, thawed
1 15-ounce can crushed Italian plum tomatoes
8 cups homemade meat broth, or 3 cups each of beef and chicken broth and 2 cups water
1 2-inch-square piece of well-scraped Parmigiano-Reggiano rind (optional)
Salt
1 15-ounce can cannellini (white kidney beans)
½ cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese
1. Put the butter and oil in a heavy bottomed, non-reactive pot such as an enameled iron Dutch oven over medium-low heat. While it heats, trim the onion, split it lengthwise in half, peel, and dice enough to make a generous cup. Add it to the fat in the pot and stir until it's nicely coated, then simmer 3-5 minutes while you prepare the celery.
2. Wash, string, trim and dice enough celery to make a generous cup. Stir it into the pot, and simmer 3-5 minutes while you wash, trim, peel and dice enough carrot to make a generous cup. Stir the carrots into the pot, and simmer 3-5 minutes.
3. While that simmers, wash, trim, and string the green beans. Cut them crosswise into ¼-inch pieces (roughly the same size as the peas). You should have a generous cup. Stir them into the pot. While that simmers, scrub, trim and dice the zucchini. Add it to the pot, stir, and let it simmer while you prepare the cabbage.
4. Remove the dark green leaves from the cabbage and, with a sharp knife, slice off and dice enough of it to make a heaping cup. Stir that into the pot and let it simmer 5 minutes more. Wrap the remainder of the cabbage well and refrigerate it for another use.
5. Scrub, peel, and dice the potatoes and add them to the pot. Stir and simmer just until they're hot through, then stir in the peas. Let it return to a simmer, then add the tomatoes, broth, cheese rind (if using), and a pinch of salt (go easy if you're using canned broth—you can correct it later). Bring it to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer gently, stirring occasionally, for 2 hours, adding a little water as needed if it gets too thick.
6. Drain and rinse the cannellini and add them to the soup. Bring it back to a simmer and cook gently for at least another 30 minutes or up to another hour. Taste and adjust the salt as needed, and simmer a few minutes longer. Remove and discard the cheese rind.
The soup can be made hours or even a couple of days ahead. If you're making it more than 3-4 hours ahead of serving it, let it completely cool, uncovered, then cover tightly and refrigerate until about an hour before you plan to serve it. . If it's too thick, dilute it with a little water, keeping in mind that it will be less thick when hot than it is cold.
7. To serve, reheat it gently over medium-to-medium-low heat, adding a little more water if needed after it's hot, then let it simmer 5 minutes, stirring often. Ladle the soup into warm bowls and serve immediately, passing freshly-grated cheese separately.