Not Too Fancy Minestrone With Potato & Red Pepper Smothered Toast

This is so yum. Like really. If you are after something new to dip into your Winter soup, you might like to try this Potato and Red Pepper Spread!

I feel like it’s influenced by something I might have once eaten at Stephanie’s Restaurant in the late 80s. I can’t really remember, but I have an inkling that that’s where the idea for this came from. Perhaps something similar was served with Bouillabaisse and we might have been given some to have at home?

Anyway, I sort of made the spread up based on a foggy memory that I can’t quite place. Foggy doesn’t make it any less delicious though. You could serve it on breakfast eggs or plonked onto pasta. I like it on toast with this soup, too – it makes a robust-yet-humble lunch…

 

Not Too Fancy Minestrone
makes enough to feed 6 (maybe more!)

100g diced pancetta (omit if vegetarian)
2 onions, diced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 sticks of celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 large potatoes, peeled and diced
4 mushrooms or so – diced
a handful of green beans, topped & tailed and then chopped up quite small
1 zucchini diced
1 tin of diced tomatoes
1 tin of borlotti beans – drained and rinsed
1 bottle of tomato passata
3 litres of stock (chicken or veggie)
sweet paprika
salt and pepper
a good slosh of olive oil

Optional: 1/2 cup of rice or 1/2 cup of dried pasta added 20 minutes into the cooking time.

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy pot. Throw in the onion, cook until transparent. Add the celery, carrot, garlic. Fry for a minute or two. Add the rest of the ingredients (EXCEPT the beans and zucchini.) Simmer, slightly covered with the lid ajar, for around 30 minutes. Everything should be soft and delicious by then. Taste and add more salt (or a stock cube), or some more stock/water to thin the soup down, if need be! Throw in the green beans and zucchini. Cook for 10 more minutes. Serve with parmesan.

 

Potato and Red Pepper Spread (for the Potato and Red Pepper Smothered Toast)
This will make about a cup’s worth so you should probably double the recipe and admit defeat now…!

1 red pepper
1 medium sized potato, peeled and diced
1/2 clove of garlic (saute it very briefly if you don’t like the taste of raw garlic)
1 tbsp olive oil
a slosh of white vinegar
2 tbsp mayonnaise (I use Kewpie!)
salt, black pepper, sweet paprika
optional: a smattering of dried chilli flakes or you could add roasted garlic or a squeeze of lemon or a sprig of thyme

Roast the red pepper by placing it over a gas flame until blackened. Pop it into a plastic bag and allow it to ‘sweat’ it’s skin off. Meanwhile, simmer the potato in a pot of boiling water until it’s soft and cooked.
Now rinse the skin off carefully under the tap. Chop the roasted, skinless pepper, removing as many seeds as possible, as well as the core.
In a food processor, throw the cooked and drained potato, the roasted pepper, the garlic, the olive oil, the mayo and the vinegar. Blitz until combined (but not gluey!) Easy does it. Season with salt and black pepper. Blitz one final time (just a ‘pulse’).  Spoon into a jar for safekeeping.

Make some toast and smother it with the delicious spread.

Tell me if you make any of these? I would love to know!

Potato, Pea and Pasta Soup
The Best Ever Chicken Soup
Roasted Tomato, Red Pepper And Cashew Pesto
Craft Saves The Day

 

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