Saving for a Zany Day

There's nothing quite so joyful as recycling all the miscellanea in the fridge into something absolutely fabulous. And this point in September when the season is switching, new vegetables coming on, is the perfect time to scoop up all those farm fresh leftovers and recycle them into something to savor later on when you're way to busy to cook but need something to save the day. Do not throw those precious tidbits away, not even in compost.

I say this as someone who just cleaned out the refrigerator and in less than 30 minutes had such exquisitely thick and tasty minestrone soup, I wanted to eat it all instead of saving it for a snowy day. But what joy it will be to pull this from the freezer: pure and perfect soup stocked with the warmth of summer. I also have to say mine was stocked with a secret piece de resistance, a real Reggiano Parmigiano rind I had been saving for a moment like this. Once you taste minestrone laced with the richness of that cheese, you'll start collecting them like I now do. And the Italians do. (Store in the freezer.) I only had a tiny sliver of one but it still imparted plenty of magical flavor to my soup.

There is no fixed recipe for this treat. Just take all the leftover vegetables you find in the fridge. You're in luck if a tomato is among them. Hopefully also an onion. I had two inches of a leek, a handful of cooked green beans, a tomato, a small red onion, a piece of green pepper, 1 inch of a tiny eggplant (zucchini would be much better), a dying heart of celery and two smallish carrots. I also fortunately had leftover fresh basil and flat leaf parsley, necessities for this. Minestrone needs beans or lentils and I had a 1/2 cup canned cannellini beans just sitting there waiting to be useful. And they were. (The last time I threw this together I didn't have beans ready so I threw in raw brown lentils, which an Italian would do too.)

Gathering all that up was the hardest part. I covered the bottom of a large saucepan with olive oil and heated it over medium flame. I tossed in 1 tsp of dried oregano, 1 tsp dried rosemary and 1 tsp cracked black pepper to season it. Then I threw in the onion, minced, that shred of leek, also minced and the piece of green pepper chopped. While these were softening up, I sliced the carrot into thin strips, chopped the green beans and celery into bite sized pieces, and sliced the eggplant very thin. I threw all this into the pot, stirred and poured in a box of vegetable broth. Then I dunked that Parmigiano rind.

I seasoned the soup with a big sprinkle of red pepper flakes and a tsp of salt. I chopped the tomato, threw it in with all its juices and and left the soup to come to a boil. While waiting, I chopped the basil and parsley leaves and tossed them in. When the soup began to boil, I added 1/3 cup Ditalini, a very small pasta, but orzo will also work in a pinch. As I said, there is no fixed recipe here. In fact, at this point I decided to add water to make more soup and probably put in two cups. Finally I threw in those cooked cannellini beans. If I'd used lentils, they would've gone in with the vegetables because they need 20 minutes minimum to cook.

I let the soup boil 15 minutes to cook that ditalini, which helped to thicken it. The cheese rind fell apart, which is what it's supposed to do so it gets absorbed into the soup. The soup was done. Of course I had to taste it to adjust the salt and other seasonings, and that's when I found I couldn't stop tasting it. It was extraordinarily delicious. And it's going to be even more so when I dig into it later on and remember the summer that created it.