A typical first world autumn problem – you have just nailed your near perfection summer personal style, then two weeks into sweater weather, and you are back to basics and already run out of ideas what to wear. The good news is that this never applies to autumn food. Chilly days bring back comfort food on the table and “Oh, I’m so tired of soups and stews and pies and crock-pots!” said nobody ever. And the best thing about colder days cooking is that you can toss in the pot literally any kind of ingredients, you have handy, and end up with a mouth-watering dish in less than an hour.
That sounds very much like minestrone, the traditional Italian soup packed with nutrients, with the chunky delight made of vegetables, pasta or rice and heavy broth.
Thick veggie soups have been recognized for their health benefits far and wide and the minestrone soup, itself, preceded the Roman Empire and has ultimately outlasted it as a simple frugal diet (based on cereals, vegetables and legumes).
The recipes and varieties of the soup are unlimited, but the etymology of its name is limited to a single source, the Latin verb ministrare – ‘to serve, administer’ – which refers to the general acting upon the authority of another, but which by the 14th century developed the meaning of serving food as well. And there we have the Italian word for substantial soup, pottage – minestra, reflecting the fact that it was served out from a central pot by the head of the household; and the literal meaning of minestrone as ‘that which is served.’
In the Italian language there is yet another popular word for soup, zuppa, which is actually a broth with slices of bread in it, coming from the Gothic suppa, ‘soaked bread.’
Our minestrone is a traditional minestra – vegetables, legumes and pasta or rice cooked in stock. The minestrone soup is part of what is known in Italy as cucina povera – literally ‘poor kitchen.’ Made primarily with leftovers and without a fixed recipe, basically you toss in all the veggies you have, whether fresh or scrapped from leftover dishes, and add some cereals and legumes and pour broth, as simple, cost- and time-effective and filling as it can be.
And the famous Italian soup made its first appearance in English print exactly as a cheap dish for the poor class, when in 1871 the January issue of the monthly periodic devoted to literature and religion, The Ladies Repository and Gathering of the West, described how: “A peasant dines on a dish of minestrone, and it costs him a penny.”
20 years later, the soup found its place and recipe in a cookery book, in the Practical Household Cookery: “The minestrone is a real Italian national soup. It is composed of a mixture of vegetables and rice.”
Feel hungry? Check your fridge and kitchen cupboards, where you have stockpiled all these cans and packs of food for an emergency, and when no disaster is on the horizon, use those to create your own variation of the hearty soup!
