MINESTRONE
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| Ligurian Impressions of an
Eighteenth-Century Traveler "In some places on those desolate mountains, olives grow in abundance, furnishing France with good quantities of oil.... The Genoese also collect a few mushrooms which they manage to make a small business out of.... The countervailing wind prevented my arrival in Portovenere, as I had hoped. So I slept in Portofino, 20 miles from Genoa. With my ship battered by the winds, I wound up with a frightening case of seasickness. I set my stomach right in a little inn, where I found good mullet, good wine and good oil." --Charles-Louis de Montesquieu, 1728 |
Prepare all of
the ingredients. Set the pasta, salt, onion, garlic, parsley,
cheese, olive oil, and the pesto to one side. Add the water
to a large soup pot and bring to a boil. Then, all at once,
add all of the ingredients except those that were set aside.
Cook at high heat for 5 minutes stirring every so often.
Then cover the pot, lower the flame to just above a
simmer, and cook for 1 hour. You should open the
pot every 10 minutes and give the ingredients a stir so
that they do not stick to the pot. After 1 hour stir in the
olive oil and add the crust of cheese. Break up any large
pieces of food, such as the potatoes or cauliflower, that
may assert its flavor individually if eaten. Then add the
pasta (instead of pasta you can put some broken galletta within the the bottom of the cup and avoid to cook pasta), salt, onion, garlic, and parsley, and cook for another hour, stirring every 10 minutes to prevent sticking. The resulting soup should be quite dense. Remove the crust of cheese and discard. Add the Parmigiano-Reggiano, then serve a bowl to each diner, stirring in some pesto just before the soup is eaten. If you did not cook pasta ,put some gallettas on the bottom of the cup under the hot minestrone soup The Genoese eat this soup hot, tepid, and cold, and it is delicious all three ways.
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