Village Minestrone

This is a hearty, nutritions soup that sticks to your ribs and warms your heart in cold season. It uses locally-available (ovo-) vegetarian ingredients and contains three different sources of starch to give you energy.

Ingredients

Soup

1 Tbsp cooking oil
100 g onion, peeled and chopped
10 g garlic, minced (optional) 50 g parsely or carrot greens (optional) 200 g tomatoes, diced
Optional spices: 1 tsp ground pepper, 1 Tbsp oregano, "Herbes de Provence"
1 tsp salt
1 cup dried beans, soaked overnight in water and cooked, with their cooking liquid
500 g Irish potatoes or peeled cassava, cut in to chunks
2 bunches rape greens, coarsely chopped
water, about 1½ liters

Spaetzels

1 egg
2 tsp cooking oil
¼ tsp granulated salt
about 1 cup ufa (maize flour) or flour

Directions

Heat a large pot over the fire.  When it is hot, add the oil and stir to coat the bottom of the pan.  Immediately add the onion, garlic, and carrot greens and sauté until the onion is tender and the garlic is fragrant, about two minutes.  Add the tomatoes and spices and cook until they become mushy and their liquid is somewhat reduced, about five minutes.  Add the potatoes or cassava and stir to coat with the sauce.  Add about 1 liter water and the salt and bring to a boil.

While the potatoes are boiling, prepare the spaetzel dough.  Beat the egg in a medium bowl with a fork with the salt and oil.  Add the ufa or flour to the egg mixture and mix in with the fork.  Continue adding ufa or flour with mixing until the dough reaches the desired consistency.  I prefer a consistency about like biscuit dough, but anything as thin as pancake batter or as thick as pie crust dough will work.

Add the greens in handfuls to the boiling soup, stirring after each addition to allow the greens to wilt and reduce in volume.  When the greens are all added and wilted, add more water as needed to allow a spoon to push the greens below the water level, but still leave some room in the pot for the spaetzels.  When the soup is simmering again, drop or lay tablespoonfuls of the spaetzel dough evenly onto the surface of the soup.  Cover the pot and simmer.  When the spaetzels are solid (about ten miunutes), the soup is ready to eat.

Serve with bread.

Video

If the video does not play, view it on YouTube at https://youtu.be/1R1A89ihIQU.