When I was very young I used to come home from school at lunch time and my dad would make instant soup from a packet with bread for lunch. I used to love it. We usually had chicken noodle or minestrone and when I found out that minestrone was Italian, I naturally assumed that the Italians ate a lot of packet soup. I now know that this is not true. I also know that minestrone soup need not necessarily contain pasta. The reason the packets of instant soup did was probably because the freeze drying technology of the time meant that pasta was one of the few foodstuffs that could be successfully used to make instant soup. (I don't think it was coincidence that chicken noodle, the only other type of instant soup I remember tasting okay, also contained pasta).
So, if the definition of minestrone soup is not 'vegetable soup with pasta in it', what is the defining ingredient? I reckon, it's courgette plants. Not just the fruit but the leaves, stalks and flowers too. Interesting, huh? But where do you get them? Well, I saw pre-packaged, limp courgette flowers on sale once in a soupermarket (ha, ha) for four hundred pounds each. That was only once though, and as far as I know they're not generally available unless you grow your own (or know someone who does).
The courgette plant is botanically the same as the marrow plant, the difference being that the courgette strain has been selected for copious flower production, which means that the plant will produce more, but smaller fruit than marrow strains. What this all boils down to is that, although you should use courgettes rather than marrows to make your soup, you needn't be so fussy about which kind of flowers and leaves you use. Whether marrow or courgette, the flower should be a female one. You'll recognise it by the little courgette at the base and by it's large size. Marrow growers who know what they are doing usually remove some female flowers to limit the number of fruits on each plant and courgette plants have so many that one or two won't be missed.
If you know where you can lay your hands on some fresh marrow/courgette plants, read on. If not, go and check out some other recipes.
The selection of vegetables can vary for this soup - you could add peppers, cabbage, etc. I'll give you the recipe without pasta. If you fancy adding some, bung it in about fifteen minutes before the end of the cooking time.
Ingredients
2 or 3 courgettes
1 courgette/marrow flower and 2 tender leaves with stalks
2 carrots
1 large potato
3 tomatoes
1 large onion
A couple of cloves of garlic
A couple of vegetable stock cubes
Black pepper
2 bayleaves
11/2 - 2 litres of water
Olive oil
Peel and chop the vegetables and fry the onion until it's soft. Add the tomatoes and sizzle them around for a minute or two. Chuck in all the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Simmer for 35-40 minutes.