A friday off and lots of time outside at the beach with visiting little people put me in mind of a tasty wintry soup with some of our veggie box veggies.
So i heated a good glug of olive oil (Australian no less) and added 4 small leeks, 4 biggish carrots and one third of a decent sized suede, all chopped small. The recipe called for celery but i decided to miss it out and put the suede in in place for a bit of sweetness. After they had softened (about 15 minutes) I turned up the heat and added 200g of bacon lardons. Not just any old bacon - Oak Smoked Bacon Lardons! With them went 3 cloves of garlic and some chopped mixed herbs from the garden - a little bit of sage, a few sprigs of marjoram and a clump of curly parsley. They cooked for another 10 minutes or so before I added 1 tin of chopped tomatoes, a litre of hot chicken stock, most of a carton of borlotti beans and the left over rind from a chunky piece of parmesan. The remainder of the beans were whizzed up with some of the soup liquid and then added back to the soup. Last in to the soup went one chopped spring cabbage and after that was tender the soup was ready to serve with a sprinkling of grated parmesan and some buttered brown bread. The sweetness of the slowly softened veggies, the salty smoky flavour of the bacon and the creaminess from the parmesan rind and the whizzed up beans all worked a treat.
Some people expressed doubts as to my ability to carry off today's winter minestrone. Needless to say they were soon eating seconds!
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