Minestrone Verde with pea pesto

This Minestrone Verde is my green take on a classic minestrone, packed with fresh green vegetables, cannellini beans and pasta. The base of the soup is my homemade [Pea Pesto], which gives it a lovely freshness and richness.

I usually use a mixture of courgette, asparagus, broccoli, green beans and spring greens, but you can mix and match the vegetables depending on what you have in the fridge. It’s a fresh, comforting and flavourful soup, and a great way to use up vegetables.

With all those green vegetables, peas and beans, it’s packed with goodness and plenty of nutritious ingredients, making this a great feel-good bowl of soup.

  • Pea Pesto
  • 100g of frozen peas
  • 4 cloves of garlic, peeled.
  • 1 tbsp. capers
  • 80g cashew nuts
  • Handful of fresh spinach
  • Handful of fresh kale
  • 40g basil
  • 60g parmesan
  • 1 lime
  • 4 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
  • ½ tsp. chilli flakes
  • Sea salt and Black pepper
  • Soup
  • Olive oil for frying 
  • 2 leeks halved lengthways and sliced.
  • 2 celery sticks finely diced. 
  • Green veggies (good options are courgettes (into sliced quarters), asparagus sliced, broccoli, green beans, spring greens, spinach, sliced fennel, any veg you like, I usually use 3 or 4 variations.
  • Herbs- a few stems each of rosemary and thyme, tie up with some butcher’s string.
  • 3 cloves of garlic, crushed.
  • 2 pints of good vegetable stock
  • 100g Pasta- I used Fusilli Bucati Corti broken into smaller pieces, you can use any small pasta or broken up spaghetti.
  • 1 tin of cannellini beans
  • 1 cup of frozen peas
  • For the pea pesto, blend all of the ingredients into a smooth paste. Add a little water if needed to make this smooth. Set aside.
  • Sauté leeks and celery in a little olive oil until soft but not browned.
  • Add the veggies of choice along with the herb bunch. Stir in 3 cloves of crushed or grated garlic and mix well.
  • Add two huge heap dessert spoons of pea pesto (save the rest for another day in the fridge) and stir through the veggies.
  • Pour in veg stock and simmer.
  • Add pasta and let this simmer and cook for 5 mins.
  • Add peas and cannellini beans, mix well. Keep the soup simmering until the pasta is cooked.
  • Once the pasta is cooked add fresh basil to serve. Serve with extra parmesan and a drizzle of EVOO.
  • (If using spinach or kale, add these at the end with the peas/beans)

LULU’S NOTES

PEA PESTO

You can make lots of variations of this pesto. The nuts can be swapped for pine nuts, which are more traditional for pesto, and you can change the vegetables depending on what you have that needs using. As long as you have a nut, a vegetable, a citrus, a herb and a cheesy component, you can play around with the flavours.

VEGETARIAN / VEGAN?

This is easily made into a vegan pesto. Simply remove the Parmesan and swap it for nutritional yeast, which adds a lovely cheesy flavour. I sometimes add nutritional yeast anyway, even when using Parmesan.

MAKING AHEAD

This dish is fine to cook ahead, however, I would recommend cooking the pasta separately and adding it when you serve. Pasta will continue to absorb the liquid from the soup as it sits, so keeping it separate helps maintain the consistency.

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