Anna Funder summer cookbook recipe: Minestrone

This soup is a message of comfort via comfort food — delicious, nutritious, foolproof, cheap and feeds lots of people.

The Way to the Heart: Anna Funder

Every day this summer, we’ll publish a favourite recipe from an Australian author, dishes made with affection for family, friends or someone special.

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When I moved out of home at 19 my mother wrote down on an index card for me her recipe for Minestrone Soup, renamed – or rather reclaimed (she had no skerrick of Italian heritage): Mum’s Vegetable Soup.

Not only was the soup not hers, it wasn’t just vegetable either — it involves a large ham hock.

But this index card is, decades after her death, the only thing I have around with her handwriting on it — a message of comfort via comfort food.

 

The soup is delicious, nutritious, foolproof, cheap and feeds lots of people. I’m about to give the recipe to my vegetarian daughter, as she moves out of home (omit ham hock, add lots of garlic).

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Writer Anna Funder at her home. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

 

 

 

1 ham hock or bacon bones

2 onions chopped

2 carrots

1 small turnip (I have no idea the magic properties of turnip but the soup also seems fine without)

2 sticks celery

Bay leaves

Bouquet garni

Parsley (esp. stalks)

1 can tomatoes

Salt and ground pepper

Stock or water to cover

Half a packet of Italian Soup Beans, soaked for hours or overnight

 

1. Put all ingredients except beans in pot (or pressure cooker). Simmer two hours (or one hour in pressure cooker).

2. Remove bones and cut up meat. Add beans and cook for another 40 minutes or until beans tender.

3. Serve with grated parmesan.

Variations

Chicken Soup: Substitute chicken bones for ham/bacon. Add soup mix instead of Italian beans.

Pea and Ham Soup: Substitute dried/soaked green peas and omit tomatoes. Put through sieve and add chopped ham meat at the very end.

Bon Appetit.

SUMMER COOKBOOK: THE WAY TO THE HEART

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Summer Cookbook

Australia’s favourite authors share their most meaningful recipes.

Anna Funder’s novel All That I Am, about the earliest resistance to fascism in Germany, won the Miles Franklin literary award and many other prizes. Her non-fiction book Stasiland, about resistance to the East German dictatorship, won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction published in English. Both are international bestsellers published in over 25 countries. Her next book Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life will be published in August.