Name: Minestrone with Pesto
Ingredients: 225g/½ lb dried borlotti or cannellini beans (canned will do); about 1.35kg/3 lb mixed vegetables (e.g. 225g/½lb courgettes, 225g/½lb French beans 225g/½lb broccoli, 225g/½lb carrots, 225g/½lb onions,; salt and pepper; ham bone or 115g/4 oz Parma ham scraps (optional); 8 tbsp Pesto, to serve; 8 tbsp olive oil; 2 garlic cloves, 2 celery stalks) 225g/½lb soup pasta, such as ditali

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Keep it Simple

By Alastair Little and Richard Whittington

Published 1993

About

Not to put too fine a point on it I despise soupe au pistou and love minestrone. The Provençal dish is inferior in every way to the Italian and misses the point of the basil sauce completely by cooking it into the soup, when it should be stirred in at the table at the last moment to provide a unique burst of flavour.

There is no absolute recipe for minestrone, but it should contain beans and I like to include a soup pasta like ditali (slightly larger than the