#buckwheat spirals

HEMSLEY + HEMSLEY for

Just like our vegetable packed broccoli, ginger and white bean, miso carrot, mexican squash and watercress soups, Minestrone is also a great way of getting nourishing bone broth into you - don’t underestimate the benefits of a good old fashioned stock! Remember to keep hold of the bones from an organic roast as simmering them away for hours will leave you with a wonderfully flavourful bone broth full of nourishing goodness and best of all, free.

Nowadays, the peasant meal of Minestrone, is one of the cornerstones of Italian cuisine and is a stand alone dish in it’s own right. Although the ingredients do vary across Italy, the recipes are generally adhered to rather than throwing everything into a pot and hoping for the best. After a recent trip to Riverford Farm however, we decided to create a minestrone using just fresh ingredients - our pickings of the best of summer veg; tomatoes, courgettes, aubergine and basil. The result was a delicious soup, with the flavours of a ratatouille, topped with ribbons of the robustly flavoured cavolo nero (or black cabbage to us) - a favourite in Italian soups. Instead of the usual refined wheat flour pasta we used pasta spirals made from naturally gluten-free buckwheat (fyi buckwheat is not wheat!) and 20% rice.

    But remember you can use this recipe as inspiration, just as we do with most recipes. To us minestrone still qualifies as a ‘leftover special’ - when the ingredients are in season, the stock is rich, and you’ve got some black pepper and quality parmesan to hand it’s always going to taste good! Adapt the recipe with whatever odds and ends you have in the fridge - try leftover summer veg such as broad beans or peas, add cooked quinoa and root veggies like squash. Make it light and brothy as a starter or thick and hearty for a main meal. Save the rinds from Parmesan and other hard cheeses and pop into your soup for extra flavour, scooping them out just before you serve. This soup can come together in 40 minutes but you could also put everything (aside from the buckwheat spirals) into the slowcooker and let it simmer gently over the course of the day. Make a big batch of this soup ready for light suppers and packed lunches and freeze portions to eat on a rainy day.