Minestrone to feed an army!

The picture doesn't do justice to the taste.

Minestrone is one of my favourite winter dishes, so this was a last chance to cook it before the weather starts getting properly warm. This recipe is based on one of Stephanie Alexander's, but I have removed animal products - ham hock, parmesan rind - and oil. Also, I made it on a pilot plant scale so there would be lots of leftovers!

Ingredients

• 5 Spanish onions, chopped
• 9 garlic cloves, crushed
• 4 celery stalks, chopped
• 4 carrots, chopped
• 700 g cooked borlotti beans
• 300 g green beans, chopped
• 6 small-medium zucchinis, diced
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 L vegetable stock (low salt) + 1 L water
• 1 L tomato passata
• 1/2 head cabbage, shredded
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast ("nooch"), optional
• 1 tsp liquid smoke, optional

Method

1. In a very large soup pot, sauté onion over medium heat until soft, adding water in portions as needed to prevent sticking or browning.
2. Add garlic and cook for a further minute.
3. Add carrot and celery and stir gently over medium heat.
4. After about 5-10 minutes, add stock, tomato passata and bay leaves, then bring to the boil.
5. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, or longer (up to 1.5 hours) if you have the time available.
6. Add zucchini and cook for a further 10 minutes.
7. Add borlotti beans, cabbage, green beans and liquid smoke and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until cabbage and beans are cooked to your liking
8. Add nutritional yeast and ground black pepper to taste. Stir in well.
9. Remove bay leaves and serve with crusty bread. Try to wait for it to cool enough that you don't remove the outermost layer of cells fro your tongue.

Notes

• the minestrone has a more attractive red colour before adding the nutritional yeast, but I was keen to try it in a soup; if you haven't tried it before, nutritional yeast (aka savoyry yeast) has a savoury, vegemite-like flavour
• I bought my liquid smoke from the Vegetarian and Vegan Society of Queensland (VVSQ) - it gives a nice smokey flavour that the non-vegetarian version gets from having a ham hock
• the original recipe uses cavolo nero (tuscan kale), but it's hard to find, so we normally just use cabbage
• I normally also put in some wholemeal pasta, but we had enough carbs with our nice bread
• I'm sure you could use just about any beans, included canned ones; we just happened to have some left-over borlotti beans in the freezer from a big batch I cooked for our last minestrone
• oh, and did I mention - on this scale the original recipe would have used 1 cup of olive oil plus 40 g of butter? I don't miss the oil and butter, personally, and neither do my arteries