A New Year's Tradition for Health & Prosperity
More than 15 years ago, I fell in love with Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, the single most comprehensive and well-tested cookbook I own - and some people claim I own more cookbooks than I could possibly need. This soup was one of my all-time favorite recipes and it's apparently one of Deborah's as well. Believe it or not, I once had the privilege of cooking this minestrone for Deborah, herself, (on my birthday, no less) and she complimented me on my perfectly cooked al-dente pasta. It might have been one of the most shining moments of my culinary life, if I'm being perfectly honest (there was that one time I taught an all-day private cheesemaking class to a Top Chef contestant too, but I digress).
For more than a decade, I've been this minestrone has been our family's New Year's Eve tradition. I love the symbolism in the soup. The health implications seem obvious with a bowl chock full of good veggies, protein-rich lentils, and bright green chard.
For prosperity - French green lentils and certain shapes of pasta are like little coins, the chard like dollar bills, and nothing could be more representative of money than Parmigiano Reggiano, which is actually used as banking collateral in Italy! If you're a New Year's symbolism purist, you might want to be sure you don't exchange the vegetable stock for chicken broth, as we all know that chickens scratch backwards and we sure wouldn't want that to show up in our New Year! Throw a piece of pork in if you want to ensure rooting forward, but the vegetable version is absolute perfection on it's own.
Go make it and see how you feel and for more incredible recipes by Deborah Madison, I can't recommend her book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (plus extra oil to finish)
- 2 cups onions, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1/4 cup parsley, chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, chopped
- 3 carrots, diced
- 1 cup celery, diced
- salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- 1 cup French green lentil, picked through, rinsed
- 2 bay leaves
- 8 parsley sprigs (may use just stems)
- 8 fresh thyme sprigs
- 9 cups vegetable stock
- soy sauce to taste (mushroom soy sauce recommended, but I've never had any)
- 1 bunch chard greens
- 2 cups small shell pasta (shells, orecchiette, or your favorite) - cooked al dente
- Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, freshly shaved or grated
Instructions:
- Heat the oil in a wide soup pot with the onions. Sauté over medium heat, stirring frequently, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.
- Add the tomato paste, parsley, garlic, vegetables, and 2 teaspoons salt and cook 3 minutes more.
- Add the lentils, bay leaves, parsley and thyme sprigs, and water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes.
- Taste for salt and season with pepper to taste. If it needs more depth, add soy sauce to taste, starting with 1 tbls. The soup may seem a little bland at this point, but the flavors will come together when the soup is finished. Remove the bay leaves, parsley and thyme sprigs.
- Boil the greens in salted water until they are tender and bright green, then chop them coarsely.
- When ready to serve, add the greens and pasta to the soup and heat through.
- Serve with extra virgin olive oil drizzled into each bowl, a generous grind of black pepper, and the shaved Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
Best shared with friends!
