Come Away with Me

Minestrone Magic

The taste of the somewhat sweet and tangy tomato based soup, cooked with loads of fresh vegetables, beans and peppered with just a little parmesan cheese and lots of parsley is among one of my favorite western style soup of all time.

Until recently, I’ve frequented places like Soup Spoon and Cedele around Raffles Place area whenever I wanted a hearty lunch of soup and bread. Needless to say, like everyone else, I paid a rather hefty $4-5 for just a bowl of soup. Then, it never really occurred to me that it is something can be prepared quite easily from home.

While they do serve minestrone soup here in Japan too, it is just not the same. If you've had the ones that they sell at Mos Burger, you'll know what i mean, it is more watery and has a lesser punch than its western counterpart.

I guess the beauty of staying on a remote island is that it forces you to do many things on your own. Not only do i have the mood and energy but also the TIME to try my hands on many recipes so I actually made this soup twice. The first time i followed one main recipe closely while referring to another one that i sourced from the internet. As it was afterall a first attempt, i prepared mostly as instructed, leaving out only the bacon (i prefer minestrone to be tomatoes,vegetables and beans only) and adding a small amount of elbow marcaroni as i planned to have it as a main dish. Overall, it turned out ok though a little more bland than i expeceted. But still something just felt amiss in the soup.

A couple of weeks later, i decided to give the soup a second try. I altered the recipe slightly, adding a little more vegetable stock and simmering it longer than the half hour as instructed. This time round, the taste was indeed the one i was looking for! The soup turned out thicker, the vegetables softer and even the color looked a nicer shade of reddish orange.


I discovered that soup really taste better during winter! There is nothing really like a bowl of hot hot soup and some toasted bread to go with, heavenly! : )

The only thing though about making soup is that it's much easier to prepare a larger portion than to simply cook one bowl. As i had enough for 4 people's share, i invited Kawasaki sensei for breakfast the next morning. As it turned out, the soup tasted even better after leaving it for a night. As planned, we had soup and salad for breakfast and Kawasaki sensei taught me how to make a simple tomato and cheese baked rice using the leftover soup. She simply boiled some rice in the soup until it thickened a little, pour it into a container, topped it with some fresh cream (or skimmed milk for a healthier version), 2 slices of cheese, sprinkled some breacrumbs over and put into the oven to bake for 30 minutes. Yes, it's really that simple. For my friends who are familiar with Japanese-style western food or 洋食，yes we made ドリア. And don't you just miss the very simple yet delicious Japanese baked rice? :)


This was how the baked rice looked like. Instead of rice, you can actually use pasta, bread or anything you fancy(broccoli, spinach, all sorts of seafood),pour enough soup to cover all the ingredients (cream soup will do too!) and you will end up with macaroni or bread (or whatever you put in it) gratin.

That's why i called it the minestrone magic! :)

posted by テレサ @ 10:24 PM