The recipe comes from this big bulky folder of magazine cuttings that I have made over the last 3 years. 
Sometimes when I need a random inspiration for cooking, I just pick it up and flip through the pages. Couple of days back as I was going through it I marked pages on recipes that I wanted to try sooner and one of them was ‘Warming Veggie Minestrone soup’.
Yesterday my neighbour was not feeling well. We have some kind of a virus going around and quite a few of us have been down with cold, cough and fever. So I thought of making some soup for her and make it a soup night for us as well. At first I thought of making tomato soup but just then I remembered that only a few days I had marked the recipe for Minestrone soup.
When I took the pot to her place, her reaction was “You did this from scratch? O My Gosh! It looks so beautiful! Tell your husband he is a very very lucky man!”
Well husband dear, you surely are 😀
Vegetable Minestrone Soup
By Ashima Goyal Siraj
Preparation time: |Cooking time: |Serves: 4
1 onion, cubed
½ cup spinach stalks, chopped (yes spinach stalks! I have decided never to throw them away.. just bite into one and you will see why!)
4 carrots, peeled and cut into small cubes
4 large tomatoes, cut into small cubes
1.5 litres vegetable stock
125 gms spaghetti, broken into half
½ cup black eyed peas, soaked overnight and boiled
½ cup frozen green peas
1 tbsp dried basil leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp Olive oil
- Cook spaghetti as per the packet instructions. Drain and keep aside.
- Heat oil in a large deep pan and sauté the carrots over medium heat. Add onion and spinach stalk and cook covered for 10 minutes until the carrots and onions are soft.
- Add tomatoes and the stock and bring to a simmer. (If using fresh peas, add them along with the tomatoes.)
- Now add spaghetti and simmer for 5 minutes. Add salt, pepper, dried basil, the boiled black eyed peas and peas and simmer for another 5 minutes.
- Check seasoning and ladle into soup bowls and serve with some crusty bread. (The picture here misses the bread because Sikander was clicking the photos while I was heating the bread! :P)
- Enjoy the warming notes
PS: Add shredded chicken for a non-vegetarian version
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