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Vegetable Chowder (Minestrone alla Milanese)
1/2 quart of stock 1 cup of rice 2 slices of lean pork, or a ham bone 2 tablespoons of dried beans 2 tomatoes, fresh or canned 1 tablespoon of peas, fresh or canned 2 onions Put into the stock the slices of pork, cut into small pieces; or, if desired, a ham bone may be substituted for the pork. Add the tomatoes, cut into small pieces also, the onions, in small pieces, and the rice. Boil all together until the rice is cooked. Then add the beans and the peas and cook a little longer. The soup is ready when it is thick. If desired, this chowder can be made with fish broth instead of the stock, and with the addition of shrimps which have been taken from their shells.
This dish can be served hot or cold.
A very compressed minestrone, written for cooks who already knew what the pot should look like. Two points need attention before you start: the liquid is scant and the beans are assumed to be already cooked.
- The beans are the hingeDried beans added at the end and cooked "a little longer" will stay gravel-hard. The wording suggests beans that had already been soaked and simmered. Soak and boil them separately until tender, or substitute drained canned cannellini or borlotti.
- Half a quart of stockThat is 2 cups, against a full cup of raw rice — enough for a stiff porridge rather than soup. Count on 6 to 8 cups of stock for this quantity of rice and vegetables, adding more as the rice swells.
- Rice choiceA Milanese minestrone would use a short-grain rice such as arborio or vialone nano, which releases starch and gives the thickness the recipe is aiming for. Long-grain rice will cook through but leave the broth thin.
- "2 slices of lean pork"Read this as pancetta or salt pork, roughly 2 to 3 oz, diced and rendered at the start rather than dropped raw into the stock. A ham bone or prosciutto end does the same job over a longer simmer.
- "1 tablespoon of peas"A token quantity. A half cup of peas is more in keeping with the dish; add frozen or canned peas in the last two or three minutes so they keep their colour.
- TimingRice needs 15 to 18 minutes in simmering stock. Onions and tomatoes go in at the start; cooked beans in the last 10 minutes to warm and lend their starch; peas at the very end.
- The fish variationIf you use fish broth and shrimp, add the peeled shrimp off the heat or in the final minute or two. Shrimp held in simmering soup for the length of the rice cooking turn tough and stringy.
- Seasoning and yieldNo salt, pepper, oil or cheese is specified — season to taste, allowing for the salt in the pork, and finish with olive oil and grated Parmesan. As written with adequate stock it serves four.
Minestrone is simply the augmentative of minestra, the Italian word for a soup of the first course; it means, in effect, the big soup, the one padded out with whatever the garden and the salting tub have to offer. The Milanese version is distinguished from Genoese and Tuscan styles by its use of rice rather than pasta or bread, which reflects the rice paddies of the Lombard plain, which has been Europe's largest rice grower since well before this book was written. The instruction that the soup may be served cold is authentic rather than eccentric: minestrone eaten at room temperature, or straight from the previous day's pot, is often said to be a common summer habit in northern Italy. Calling it "Vegetable Chowder" tells you who the book was for. Aimed at English-speaking readers, it translated unfamiliar Italian dishes into terms such a cook would recognise, at a period when Italian food in the United States was still largely confined to immigrant households.