Genoese Minestrone Soup

This soup is best if done in spring time when you get all this super healthy green vegetables.

I prepared the Genoese Minestrone some how I ate it at Antica Osteria Vico Palla in Genoa.

Maybe you do not know that this fresh vegetable soup is famous all over the world cause of the sea. I got told this little story from an old fisherman at the port. At the Genoa port where for centuries thousands of ships came and landed year by year, they used to run small floating restaurants for the sailors and shipping people. This so called “catrai” were built on boats or on small barges and the used to sell steamy bowls of fresh food to the shippers. From fish soups, to stews up to the famous minestrone, which everyone loved after being long time on the sea, having only salted seafood and crackers. This soup whit its green freshness was what everyone was running or sailing for.

When the shippers and sailors went back home with this soothing veggie soup in their minds they told about it to their beloved once. So Minestrone was in everyones mouth and it became as the worldwide best known vegetable soup.

Minestrone was used to be served as a full meal after a hard day of work, to get a healthy warm plate. There is no standard receipe since it was made with all seasonal vegetables they could get at the market.

I prepared a lighter spring Minestrone with super fresh green beans, fresh borlotti beans, green peas, savoy cabbage, zucchini, carrots, leek, celery stalk, eggplant and spring potatoes.

There are, only some rules that must be respected in order to prepare the “queen” of Ligurian soups:

First of all minestrone is a soup that cooks at low fire for a long time. Boiling vegetables nearly have to melt and the soup shall dry out little by little. It is said that a spoon stuck in the center of a minestrone bowl should stay upright, maybe it’s too much but the final texture indeed should be thick and creamy.

The traditional minestrone calls for no initial soffritto differently than many other Italian soups. All vegetables, cubed, are boiled just in water, slightly salted (no stock needed).

Inevitable, then, is a piece of parmesan cheese crust, well scraped, to be added halfway through. Cooking slowly it softens, dissolves and releases all its flavors.

Minestrone is born as an all in one course and therefore it calls for pasta, to be added at the end of the cooking, possibly adding a glass of water if the soup is already too dense. In Genoa there are a couple of traditional pasta of durum wheat semolina specially conceived to be cooked in the minestrone because they are small, very thick and don’t overcook: they are scucussun (a cus-cus extralarge version) and bricchetti(short pasta matches, alike broken spaghetti).

The last touch, the one that gives the fresh Ligurian flavor to the dish, is the final addition of pesto. Pesto, in fact, must not boil so keep it sparkly green colour and release all of its “raw” fragrances and add it only after serving it on top of the soup.

Finally, another tradition rule is that minestrone have to be served after a fifteen minutes rest in the bowl (not cooking any longer, just rest).

And last but not least in summer they serve it like at Vico Palla at room temperature with a glass of chilled wine and a piece of crispy bread or fresh focaccia.

Try this out to eat it cold and if it is really hot out there leave the pasta and eat the veggies only.

It has to be said this is super delicious. (click to get to the recipe)