Dish #5

Minestrone

This week's "make something new" was a cocktail I made using cranberry juice and the Rock Coconut Rum I bought in Puerto Rico. I totally forgot that it technically fit into my new year's resolution of making something new each week until just now when I started typing. So, since there was no photo, I'm going to tell you about the new dish I made.

My first attempt at making Minestrone soup. [I want to keep saying min-es-tron-ey but I believe it is pronounced min-es-trown.] As with all the other new recipes I've used, I changed it up a bit. A simple soup to make, but next time I'll use my 5-quart pot b/c the 3-quart it called for just barely worked (I had a lot of splashing from the soup boiling and had quite a mess on my stove and burners that I had to clean up afterwards).

I started with olive oil, a cup of onions and some green peppers (both which I had frozen in my freezer). Next came the vegetable broth, 2 cans of Italian styled stewed tomatoes and a can of kidney beans. I couldn't find any yellow squash or zucchini so I ended up throwing in a can of drained corn and chopped up some peeled carrots. Then I added a cup of uncooked pasta. It took about 40 minutes to make from start to finish and was very filling. I did add some Parmesan cheese to it after scooping it into my bowl.

3-quarts is a lot of soup for one person and I can't freeze it because of the pasta. I think I might try smaller pasta next time. I used ditalini pasta but despite using 4 ounces more of broth than the recipe called for, there wasn't much broth when it was done cooking. When it came time to store the leftovers, it seemed as if the pasta absorbed more of the broth b/c I had mostly beans, vegetables and pasta than "soup".

Overall tasty, could use some Italian spices next time around if I wanted to jazz it up a bit, but not too bad for my first try; looks like I'll be eating soup for the next week.