Fresh homemade Minestrone

So have a household of illness, flu, sore throats and manflu so needs be for some Minestrone. I hate manflu. He gets manflu and with a temperature of 37°C he is literally dying, and even though he doesn't realise it, he raises his voice, which means that if  I'm ill, as I am, I'd rather be in the kitchen cooking so that I don't have to listen to him. lol. 

This is a basic recipe for the traditional minestrone. Other soup recipes will be forthcoming seeing as I live of soup for most of the year.

If you don't have "short pasta", you can break up some spaghetti into 2 cm pieces and use that. I would advise against using pasta if you are bulk making for freezing as the pasta will absorb all the liquid, just add the pasta when reheating after unfreezing. This makes 4 servings.  

•      120 grams of “short” pasta or rice
•      300 grams of cannellini beans
•      50 g pancetta
•      1 stick of celery
•      1 courgette
•      1 carrot
•      1 potato
•      1 clove garlic
•      1 onion
•      2 tomatoes or 1 tablespoon of sauce
•      1 stockcube
•      butter
•      Salt
•      Pepper
•      parsley

preparation:

1. Wash the vegetables under cold running water for a few minutes, and then cut into cubes, smaller cubes for the carrot and potato and bigger cubes for the fleshy veg.
2. Heat up a saucepan and then add a lttle butter with a litte extra virgin olive oil and brown the pancetta, garlic, onion and parsley.
3. Add the vegetables, chopped tomatoes (or a tablespoon of sauce), the stockcube and 1 and a half liters of water.
4. Put the lid on the pot, reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.
5. At the end of this time, add the pasta, or rice of your choice and simmer for another 5 minutes.
6. Turn off the flame, remove the lid and add a pinch of pepper and salt, stir and let stand in the soup pot for 2-3 minutes.
7. Serve immediately, drizzling a little olive oil on top.