Name: Minestrone Milanese
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 10 leaves of sage; 1 celery head - small dice; Bunch of parsley; 10 ltrs water; 2 cloves garlic; 2 ripe beef tomatoes; 50 g lard; 3 medium potatoes - peeled and small dice; 300 g white onion - small dice; 300 g fresh borlotti beans or 100 g dried (must be soaked for 48 hrs); 1 small Savoy cabbage - sliced thin; 200 g pork belly - blanched and cut into bite-size chunks; 300 g Maratelli rice - see note

Preparation info

Difficulty
Complex

Appears in

The Chefs' Knowledge

By Chandos Elletson

Published 2022

About

Minestrone, like a ramen, is a broth with vegetables, sometimes with meat and in this case beans instead of cooked pasta. Practically every region of Italy has a version which makes it a difficult dish to pin down. This version is from Milan and is typical of Northern Italian cuisine.

Minestrone is a mindset. It is very easy to think of it as a place to put off-cut vegetables and odds and sods that need to be used up. There’s nothing wrong with that mentality - so long as you know w