Slightly spicy minestrone soup with parsley and kale

Name: Slightly spicy minestrone soup with parsley and kale
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: salt and pepper to season; finely grated zest of 1 lemon; 2 tbsp parsley leaves, roughly chopped; 100 g kale, roughly chopped; grated Parmesan or vegetarian hard cheese; 1 potato, peeled and roughly chopped; 1 x 400 g tin chopped tomatoes; 2 tbsp tomato purée; 75 g small pasta shapes; 1 bouquet garni (see Tip); 100 g dried haricot beans, soaked overnight to soften; 1 onion, roughly chopped; 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil plus extra for drizzling; 2 celery sticks, roughly chopped; 2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped; ½ medium red chilli, deseeded and chopped; 3 garlic cloves, crushed

Preparation info

Serves
6

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Prue

By Prue Leith

Published 2018

About

Traditional Italian minestrone requires everything to be chopped very finely to make a soup that’s eaten as a starter. I’ve just adapted it to make a hearty, chunky main course.

Ingredients

100 g dried haricot beans, soaked overnight to soften
1 bouquet garni (see Tip)
3

Europe
Italy
Starter
Main course
Vegetarian
Mediterranean
Gluten-free
Spicy

Method

Rinse the soaked beans and put into a large, heavy-based saucepan. Add the bouquet garni. Cover with roughly twice the volume of water to beans and bring to the boil. Turn down and simmer, uncovered, until the beans are soft and tender – about 1½–2 hours. Drain and set aside the softened beans, discarding the aromatics.
Rinse out the pan, add the ol