This is a thick version of summer’s soupe au pistou, changed to make use of vegetables available locally in winter. Fresh basil grows in my greenhouse, but as it isn’t usually buyable in winter, use bottled pesto sauce, which can be bought in specialty food shops to provide the finishing earthy flavor of this soul and belly-warming stew. This soup is subject to change without notice according to what turns up at the grocery store. The basil is what gives it distinction.
Serves four.
1/2 lb. white dried Great Northern beans
Water to cover
4 slices double-smoked thick bacon
Olive oil as needed
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 large yellow onions, chopped
2 - 3 stalks celery, peeled and diced
2 large carrots, peeled and sliced
1 cup yellow turnip, cubed 1/2 inch
1(16 oz.) can crushed tomatoes
2 cups potatoes, cubed 1/2 inch
3 cups finely shredded cabbage 2 bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 cups zucchini, in small sticks
Basil sauce:
1/4 cup minced parsley
1/4 cup olive oil
10 - 15 leaves fresh basil
Freshly milled white pepper
Salt
Or bottled pesto sauce
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Rinse, pick over, and soak the white beans overnight or give them a quick soak treatment: Bring them to a boil for one minute, turn off, cover, and soak for one hour. Bring them to a boil again, simmer for two hours or until done. Home-cooked beans are firmer, tastier, and infinitely preferable to canned ones and there’s absolutely nothing to cooking them. Add no salt until they are two-thirds done as it hardens the beans and can make them like bullets. Beans are too unpredictable to cook in the soup.
Cook the bacon slowly in a heavy, large casserole, remove, drain on paper, and reserve. Add a splash of olive oil if not much fat was rendered from the bacon. Saute the garlic, onions, and celery over low heat, covered, until tender. Then add the carrots, turnips (rutabaga), tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, bay leaves, and salt and pepper to taste. (Season lightly.) Simmer slowly, with lid ajar, for about an hour.
Add the cooked beans, with their liquid, and simmer a few minutes. Turn off the heat and leave the soup to mellow' for an hour or so—or it can with profit be made the previous evening or morning and eaten at night. Bring the soup to a simmer and add the zucchini sticks (zucchini seems to have joined the “year-round weekenders” as a permanent fixture on the scene) and cook for five minutes.
Stir into the soup the sauce made by pureeing the basil, parsley, and oil together with a littler salt and pepper or add about three tablespoons of pesto sauce to the soup. Serve sprinkled with the reserved bacon. Pass a bowl of fresh, pungent Parmesan to be added to taste by each per? son at the table. Serve a rough-textured, hearty peasant loaf and butter or that stuff I eat called Country Morning Blend. Or you might serve a fresh pat of goat cheese to spread on the bread. This is real sustenance though not stupendous calorically since it is the entire meal.
If you cannot get basil, you must compensate by using more fresh parsley and putting dried thyme into the soup or beans at the beginning. Dried basil has, in my experience, little or no effect on anything; however, frozen basil does give up that ineffable perfume and flavor that makes this soup so special on a bone-chilling day.
