Recipe for chilly evenings: warming bean and pasta soup
A simple Italian-inspired bean and pasta soup with a blended vegetable base offers a warming, filling meal for autumn evenings using easily available ingredients.
As autumn brings cooler, damper evenings, warm and filling soups become an appealing option. One straightforward choice is an Italian-inspired bean and pasta soup built on a blended vegetable base, which gives it a creamy texture without cream or other heavy additions.
Ingredients needed
The soup calls for a jar of canned beans (or an equivalent amount of pre-soaked dried beans), a carrot, an onion, a potato, a clove of garlic, a stalk of celery, bouillon cubes, pasta of choice, olive oil, and hard cheese for serving.
Preparation steps
All the ingredients — the beans, the whole vegetables, and the bouillon cubes — go into a pot with cold water to cook. Using canned beans speeds up the process, since it's simply a matter of waiting for the vegetables to soften. Working with dried, pre-soaked beans takes considerably longer, until they turn tender.
Once the vegetables and beans are ready, a portion of them — the potato, carrot, celery, onion, garlic, some beans, and a bit of the broth — is removed and blended into a smooth mixture. Pasta is then added to the remaining broth and beans in the pot, and cooked while stirring frequently until it reaches the desired tenderness. The heat is then turned off, and the blended vegetable puree is stirred back in along with a small amount of olive oil.
The finished soup is best served hot, with each portion generously topped with grated hard cheese.
