Do I have a treat for you - Pesto Minestrone soup!
Look at it! It's hot and it's tasty and it's VEGETARIAN?? Yup, it's vegetarian.
If any of you have spent even a second around our compound you will know that pretty much nothing is vegetarian. We are meat eaters - meat at every meal - we run the Smokin' Goose - which is a meat lover's mecca. We don't do meat by the pound, we do it by the tens of pounds. So why the vegetarian recipe? I don't know - but anything with pesto draws my eye, so Pesto Minestrone it is!
This is the meal you want to have when what you DON'T have is time! Readily available ingredients make this a 20 minute meal. You start with some minced garlic in oil, and heat until lightly browned. Then the broth, water, veggies and spices gets mixed in and cooked for a few minutes just to blend the tastes. Refrigerated tortellini is next - and you boil it another ten minutes or so to cook the pasta through.
Once the pasta is done, you add a heaping scoop of pesto. I had the good fortune of having some homemade pesto from my last year's garden basil ready in the freezer, so I pulled out a chunk and let it thaw while I worked on the soup. It is magic!
If you don't know what pesto is, it's pretty much the food of the Gods. Basil, olive oil, garlic, Parmesan cheese and pine nuts (or pignoli - pronounced pinˈyōlē) are ground together (mortar and pestle, originally - hence the word pesto - pestle - pesto, get it?) to form the most magnificent tasting paste. It's used in Italian dishes and foods such as pasta, breads and dips and is so amazing tasting, it has found its way onto my menu rotation for life. Yup, it's that good.
We grated some fresh Parmesan cheese right off the block to add to our bowls of soup.
I love a good melty cheese in my soup, so it was perfect.
You could easily swap out the vegetable broth for chicken broth; you can swap the cheese tortellini for meat tortellini; you can swap out frozen mixed veggies for squash, zucchinni, broccoli or asparagus - or you could use some combination of this all. It really is an easy and versatile soup that can work a number of ways.
Pesto Minestrone is tasty and it is quick- so don't hesitate to give it a try if you need a super fast lunch or light dinner. If you do try it - come on back and let me know what you think.
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