Rosie Birkett’s totally un-boring minestrone soup recipe
To launch this year’s BOOM Awards, Team Balance gathered with a host of inspiring people from the wellbeing, health, food and sustainability industries, and the lovely people at the Soil Association, at The Brick Kitchen on Columbia Road. We ate a delicious spread, including Rosie Birkett’s healthy minestrone (with optional meatballs) soup, drank organic wine and had a fabulous evening celebrating all things organic.
Rosie Birkett, who’s this year’s BOOM Awards ambassador (a.k.a Boombassador) wanted to prove how tasty organic vegetables can be, so demonstrated a simple recipe — which you can try for yourself below…
Ingredients
Soup:
3 tbsp organic olive oil
Sprig of thyme Bay leaf
1 tbsp parsley stalks 2 onions, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 sticks of celery, diced
1 small organic swede, peeled and diced
150g tinned plum tomatoes
1 tbsp good red wine vinegar
200g organic kale, stalks removed (reserved and chopped), leaves shredded
100g orzo
Parsley and chervil, to garnish
Grated lemon zest, to garnish
Organic cheddar, to garnish Salt and pepper, to taste
Optional meatballs:
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp dried chilli
1 tsp white peppercorns
500g organic beef mince
500g organic pork mince
100g fine sourdough breadcrumbs
1 onion, grated
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and grated
2 sprigs of thyme, leaves picked
Zest of 1 organic, unwaxed lemon
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Organic olive oil, for handling mixture
Method
To make the soup:
Heat the olive oil over a medium to high heat. Add the thyme, bay leaf and parsley stalks and stir, cooking for a minute or two to infuse the oil, then add the diced veg and cook, stirring for 10–15 minutes, until softened and smelling good. Add the plum tomatoes and cook for a couple more minutes before adding a litre of water, vinegar and the kale stalks, and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook for another 10–15 minutes, allowing all the flavours to infuse. During this time, make the meatballs.
To make the meatballs:
Toast the spices and peppercorns in a dry frying pan for a few minutes, until they start to crackle. Pound them up in a spice grinder or pestle and mortar. Place the beef and pork mince into a large mixing bowl with the spices and other ingredients and mix well with clean hands. If the mix seems a bit dry add a little olive oil. Oil your hands and shape into balls.
Add the shredded kale and orzo to the soup and stir, followed by the meatballs, and cook until the pasta and meatballs are done. Dish into soup bowls and garnish with fresh herbs, lemon zest and grated cheddar. Serve with good sourdough.
For a vegetarian alternative, use spinach and ricotta dumplings and cook in the same way, in the soup.
(Recipe by Rosie Birkett, cook, food writer, stylist, journalist, author and this year’s BOOMBASSADOR.)
Read more: The organic index — the facts you never knew