Minestrone Soup with Pesto

An early spring warm-up! A steaming bowl of delicious soup is always welcome in the chill air of March and in this classic recipe I brighten the fresh vegetable flavors with a tasty basil walnut pesto. Buon Appetito! #LidiasRecipes #LidiasItaly #LidiasKitchen #LidiaBastianich #ItalianFood #25YearsofLidia #FromLidiasTableToYours @AccademiadeiCento

Minestrone Soup with Pesto

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Avent in mon an adventure in the Mountain up in the mountains there’s always that snow that cold and soup is always welcomed so a nice simple Min throner everybody loves that get yourself a nice good pot some oil and we begin with the onion family some chopped Onions a little bit of salt to the onion so it cooks Faster the leaks the leaks are another great vegetable I love it they’re sweet they have that onion they have that greenness and I love leaves so we have carrots and celery so we want to chop those you peel them and then just cut them in Cubes okay let me check the onions are wilting let me just put them to one side I’ll add the potatoes on this side and let them them kind of caramelize a little Bit okay Celery uh you can cut them in chunks like this so they really remain as a chunk we’ll add that next let me just turn around there we go W they’re sticking a little bit but that’s good I like that because that will give it more

Flavor so now I make a little hot spot here and I’m going to add the tomato paste tomato paste is just dehydrated ripe tomatoes and traditionally the tomatoes uh that were overripe that were not good for candy they were kind of peeled and mashed and then drained and

Then put on boards like this big boards really chopped up in the Sun and they would spread it out like spackle you know and let the sun dehydrate and sweeten it and again collect it and do it over and over of course each family would do their own Under the

Sun so that has the flavor a little bit of the Browning now we throw in the carrots and celery okay H I can smell the uh conserva used to call the tomato paste and you add simple water to this of course and if the water is hot that

Makes the whole thing that much faster so here I have some water heating and we’ll pour it right in there okay so the water is nice and hot and the soup just continues to cook right away like this the herb that I like to flavor my soups with is bay

Leaves and beans of course are at the basis of a soup because beans are you know proteins in this case these are the pinto beans the dry ones you soak them overnight in water and these are the beans that have been soaked so you you can see that they became nice and plump

They took in the water and this is when you put them right in the soup and they will cook much faster I’m not going to put any salt because salt I think sort of keeps the beans a little harder but I will put a little bit pepperoncino and the salt I’ll add

Later we’ll bring this to a high boil this will boil for about 40 minutes we’ll cook the vegetables halfway we’ll come back and we’ll add the green vegetables the ones that are cooked in much less time tantino is the next region uh next to f is from the hills of the mountains going

Up the Alps I went several times in the springtime and summertime and it’s the the beauty of of the countryside itself the the multitude of wild flowers the rushing waters this clean smell of the mountains and then in the distance you still see the peaks with the snow on top

Cows grazing here and there it’s it’s a very peaceful and beautiful setting let’s check the soup it has boiled down you can see the beans have softened the carrots everything they’re ready for the next addition of vegetables and I’m going to pick up the heat because I’m adding cold things to

It and this is escaro leaves of escaro just shredded washed well okay zucchini just cubed zucchini this will take another 20 minutes to cook down the escarole and the zucchini all together so let we add some salt at this point that should be enough but you

Know I always tell you to taste as you go along so we’ll taste later on we’ll cover it now when the minr is ready and it’s cooked and mellow I like to liven it up with a little bit of pesto and the pesto is rather simple this pesto is basil lots of

Basil parsley Italian flat parsley and walnuts bit of Salt and we’re going to add some oil to this to make it a little bit looser I think that should be done and yeah the pesto is nice and loose I like it sometimes you like your pesto a little bit more Dan okay so that’s ready we leave it for

About 20 minutes half an hour I’m going to clean up and it’s going to be ready so I think we found the perfect spot corado you chose a beautiful spot where are we tell me oh we are in the Italian apps exactly the dolomites and this is

The alpi which is the highest plateau in Europe wow this is this is really beautiful perfect the birds are singing I brought some good food and some bubbly you open that and Italian spoon desserts I showed you so many of them uh and this is all ingredients from here yogurt you know

The mountains lots of cows out there on those plateaus and the berries from from the woods so corado you want me to open it what do you think what are we here for Wow first we do a little chin chin no L CH Ching I think that the fresh air up here makes it taste even better so now this is my gift to you so you can snack a little bit okay it’s easy you just open the top just like that I added some little crunchiness the Wafers so you

Have everything you have uh the yogurt local the crunchiness of the Wafers and deliciously love and of the Place am Mata Amat that’s that’s a Roman expression absolutely he loves the Alps but he’s from Rome so guess who showed up for dinner so are you hungry definitely look how good it looks you see it the super looks great it looks delicious when I serve uh anything on the plate especially plating

I always have a little thing underneath so that it doesn’t dribble all over the place okay Grandma always like to feed their families absolutely so this is here that looks good I’m going to do one for you one for me so that’s for you right that’s for me

Okay yeah and we could put a little bit of past so now at this point and not much just little drizzles like that you want a little bit in here yeah absolutely okay there we are a little bit in here and that’s the pesta and it has some cheese Crouton you think we

Should put a few I love cheese grons I’m always ah you do okay so that’s that and of course what would soup be without cheese absolutely some formo like that let me just put a little bit on Grandma’s especially fond of cheese and her soups absolutely yeah let’s taste this let’s

See how you like It M delicious smooth what do you think of the soup fabulous really really good delicious so are you going to hang around and learn another recipe for me absolutely I have a nice surprise a new recipe I’m sure you don’t know maybe you do I don’t know we’ll find out