Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [55]
10. Add the pestà to the soup, stirring it in thoroughly, and simmer for another 15 minutes or so. Allow the soup to settle for a few minutes before serving.
Note If unfamiliar with cranberry beans, see the recipe for Pasta e fagioli Soup.
Ahead-of-time note Although La Jota requires hours of slow cooking, these can be staggered and scheduled at your convenience because the soup should be served a day or two after it has been made to give its flavors time to develop fully and merge. You can interrupt its preparation whenever you have completed one of its major steps. Allow the soup to cool, refrigerate it, and on the following day resume cooking where you left off. Prepare and add the pestà, however, only when ready to serve.
Novara’s Bean and Vegetable Soup
THIS MONUMENTALLY dense minestrone from Piedmont, the northwestern region of Italy at the foot of the Alps, has at least two lives. It is a deeply satisfying vegetable soup, and it is also the base for one of the most robust of risotti: La paniscia.
If you are making the recipe to use it in la paniscia, there will be some soup left over, because only part of it will go into the risotto. But the leftover soup can be refrigerated, and, a few days later, when its flavor will be even richer, you can expand it with pasta and broth for yet a different version.
For 4 to 6 servings
¼ pound pork rind OR fresh side pork (pork belly)
⅓ cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 medium onions, sliced very thin, about 1 cup
1 carrot, peeled, washed, and diced
1 large stalk of celery, washed and diced
2 medium zucchini, washed, then trimmed of both ends and diced
1 cup shredded red cabbage
1 pound fresh cranberry beans, unshelled weight, OR 1 cup dried cranberry or red kidney beans, soaked and drained but not cooked
⅓ cup canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
3 cups Basic Homemade Meat Broth, OR 1 cup canned beef broth diluted with 2 cups water
Freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese for the table
1. Cut the pork into strips about ½ inch long and ¼ inch wide.
2. Put the oil, butter, onion, and pork into a soup pot, and turn on the heat to medium. Stir from time to time.
3. When the onion becomes colored a deep gold, add all the diced vegetables, the shredded cabbage, and the shelled fresh beans or the drained, soaked dried beans. Stir well for about a minute to coat all ingredients thoroughly.
4. Add the cut-up tomatoes with their juice, a pinch of salt, and several grindings of pepper. Stir thoroughly once again, then put in all the broth. If there should not be enough to cover all the ingredients by at least 1 inch, make up the difference with water.
5. Cover the pot, turn the heat down to low, adjusting it so the soup cooks at a very slow simmer. Cook for at least 2 hours. Expect the consistency, when done, to be rather thick. Taste and correct for salt and pepper.
If you have made it to serve as a soup and not as a component of la paniscia, ladle it into individual plates or bowls, let it settle a few minutes, and bring to the table along with freshly grated Parmesan.
Bean and Red Cabbage Soup
AS MUCH as a cabbage soup, this is a full-bodied pork and beans dish, part of that corpulent Mediterranean family of bean and meat dishes of which cassoulet is also a member. You should not hesitate to take some freedom with the basic recipe, varying its proportions of sausage, beans, and cabbage to suit your taste. The recipe as it is given here will produce a robust course in which soup, meat, and vegetable are combined and can become a meal in itself. Increasing the amount of sausage will make it even heartier. On the other hand, you can eliminate the sausage altogether, substituting it with a piece of fresh pork on