Another famous dish of the endless Italian cuisine
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 2 € pp)
- salt
- 1 large carrot
- 1 celery stalk
- 1 small celery root
- 1 onion
- 12 stalks of red Swiss chards
- 12 leaves of Swiss chards
- EV olive oil
- 100 g fresh pasta
- 1,2 litre chicken or vegetable stock
- Drops of lemon
Minestrone soup has uncountable versions. Each family has its own version or versions, with or without beans, with or without tomatoes, with peas, cauliflower, broccoli and many other ingredients.
Usually this soup has more solid ingredients than mine, as according to tradition it must be hearty too, but I prefer using smaller portions. That´s why the pasta amount is relatively low.
So, in a pot with very hot salted water and we start boiling, carrots, celery sticks, celery root, onion and swiss chards stalks, all cut in larger or smaller dice. We boil each one separately, in order to help them maintain their original colour and to remove them the right moment. Attention: The vegetables must be very well boiled and soft enough.
We also cut in large pieces the chard leaves and we blanch them for a minute.
We prepare 100 gr fresh pasta without eggs as we have learnt here. We pass the pasta from the machine, stopping at the dimension 4, as we want the pasta layer to be relatively thin.
We arrange the pasta on a wooden surface and we start cutting it in very small triangles with not exactly the same shape. Maltagliati in Italian means badly cut. This word is used for the pasta shapes which are not even and have slightly different dimensions but the same thickness.
We boil the maltagliatini in a pot with salted water, for just one minute, as the pasta will continue to be cooked in the stock. When they are ready, we drain them and we wash them under running water, in order to remove their external starch which would spoil the colour of the stock.
We heat the stock adding some salt and we add all the solid ingredients. We cook for about 1 or 2 minutes
We serve garnishing with abundant olive oil and some lemon drops.
