Julie Nguyen here, co-founder and CEO of Methodology. I’m fortunate to spend several weeks a year in a different Blue Zone, and this Fall I traveled to Sardinia for the first time. Sardinia is an Italian island in the Mediterranean with the longest lived men in the world.
Sardinian centenarians are known for eating vegetable soups pretty much daily, so I asked Sardinian Chef Alice Cherchi of Sardinian restaurant I CherChi based in Cagliari, a city on the southernmost tip of Sardinia, to teach us how to make her grandma's minestrone recipe.
This nourishing recipe is easy to make and the perfect cozy meal for this time of year. It tastes best the day after you cook it, when the ingredients have had time to meld.
The recipe calls for lard to add flavor, which is common in traditional Sardinian recipes where meat and animal fat is used as a seasoning rather than a main in everyday meals (meat is reserved for special occasions). If you don’t want to use lard, you can substitute it with pork belly or ground pork if you eat pork or with an umami mushroom powder if you prefer to keep the recipe vegan.
The soup can be served with bread or fregola, a Sardinian pasta. I prefer to eat the soup with just chickpeas as the main form of complex carbohydrates since chickpeas are a whole food starch packed with fiber and protein.
Note that the chickpeas in here are dried chickpeas, not canned chickpeas. Soaking then cooking the chickpeas yourself as called for in the recipe will give you a chickpea with a firm texture that has a nice bite to it, as opposed to canned chickpeas that can be very mushy. If you’re short on time, feel free to use canned chickpeas that you put into the soup directly and simmer with the vegetables.
Check out this recipe on Instagram to see videos of what the soup should look like. Follow @gomethodology on Instagram for more recipes and to follow along with my food travel adventures that inspire our global, nourishing menu.
Ingredients for 4 people: 200g of fresh pork lard
120g whole carrots
200g whole potatoes
160g green beans
200g escarole or chard or spinach
200g of dried chickpeas to soak
240g savoy cabbage
100g cabbage flower
40g celery
40g purple onion
2 sun dried tomatoes
8 fresh peeled cherry tomatoes
20g tomato paste
Salt to taste
Steps:
- Soak the chickpeas in warm water for 8 hours, then boil them for 30 minutes in water and salt
- Cut the vegetables into small pieces, except for the potatoes and carrots
- In a large saucepan, brown the lard over a low heat
- Pour in all the vegetables and brown with the fat from the lard
- Cover the mixture with water and cook for 60 minutes over medium heat
- Mash the carrots and potatoes with a fork
- Adjust the amount of salt to taste and let it rest for about 30 minutes