Traditional minestrone soup with zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes, vegetables and savory Italian seasonings makes a warming and hearty lunch or first course.
Zucchini Minestra Soup
By Sue Lau | Palatable Pastime
My recipe of the day is for zucchini minestra soup, which is an Italian vegetable soup which can be made in a variety of ways.
In this version, I have left out the pasta or beans which are commonly turned to, as they are pantry staples, and opted instead to make a type with potatoes. And instead of green beans which occasionally make an appearance, I have left the vegetables as zucchini squash, along with a spattering of leeks, onion, and celery, all being bathed in the usual tomato base.
This is very much perfect for a snowy winter day, as it is here today. The snowflakes are flying, and while in Cincinnati I am not being buried as the northern tier of the midwest is under a foot high blanket in blizzard conditions, I can comfortably enjoy this flurry of winter without any real accumulation.
Which of course, means no sidewalk shoveling, leaving lots more time to bake some Christmas cookies, which I will be sharing with you all of next week. Just in time for you to sort out your holiday baking plans.
It really is a good idea to plan ahead, and that’s one thing that blogging has helped me with. I am normally guilty of holding off until the last second to make menu decisions. But as a blogger, the window for cooking and baking arrives several weeks earlier (sometimes even earlier than that) so everything can be made ready to put into a blog post.
Otherwise it sits cooling its heels in the archive for a year- and trust me, I have plenty of that material. Not all of it is being late getting things made, but I cook prolifically, and I just don’t have time to blog everything properly, so it stacks up. Of course, Murphy’s law says that if I need a specific type of recipe to blog together with my friends on a theme, I can guarantee you I will have absolutely zero of those recipes set aside.
So it keeps me hoppin’. Enjoy this one, which has been waiting in my files since February of 2016. But I assure you- in all that time, none of its deliciousness has been lost. Not a single drop.
~s
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Zucchini Minestra Soup
Ingredients
- 1 leek (white and light green parts only, diced)
- 1 cup chopped onion
- 1 cup diced celery
- 2 teaspoons chopped fresh garlic
- 1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 3 cups vegetable broth
- 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes with basil
- 12 ounces diced zucchini
- 7 ounces Russet potatoes (peeled and diced)
- 2 teaspoons basil paste
Instructions
- Simmer leek, onion, celery, garlic, Italian seasoning, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, vegetable broth and tomatoes for thirty minutes.
- Add zucchini, potatoes, and basil paste, then simmer 45 minutes more.
Notes
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