Kugelhopf (Gugelhupf) - eggless but deliciously flaky bread

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? 

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? 

How do you solve a problem like Maria? 

....

How many of you sit up at the sound (or music) of those words and start to hum along, sing along? One of my favorite movies of all time (I can watch it over and over and over again) - Sound of Music, a true life story of WW times made immortal by Julie Andrews & Christopher Plummer on the big screen. When a total misfit at the convent but very sincere in her ways, music loving Maria comes in to the house of strict, disciplinarian widower with 7 children as a governess, things cannot go well at the beginning with the children refusing to allow any governess to stick around. It is such a beautiful story of love, laughter and music even in the morbid and fearful times of war and uncertainty.

I first read an abridged version of the book when I was in grade school, it was my older brother's 'non-detail (another term for fiction)' book in high school and had always wanted to watch the movie. When I came to study in a convent for the high school years, if there ever was a movie that the nuns would approve of, it was this one :-), though I didn't get a chance to see the movie then, I watched several runs of the adapted school play during the 3 years. The first Christmas season here, strolling the festive looking aisles of the stores, I saw the VHS (video cassettes) displayed prominently (classics always make a come back during the holiday season here, perfect for a gift :-)). With a 2 year old tugging at my knees, although splurging money on movies was not a common thing at the time, I made an exception and indulged myself to buying the cassette. We enjoyed the movie so much and after years of rewind and reruns, it gave up on us and a couple years back, BH bought me a blue ray version of the same :-). Love lives on..

What has Sound of Music got to do with today's recipe? Does it even have anything to do with it at all? Well, if you give me a chance, I will connect the two together :-). In addition to the story, I also fell in love with the beautiful and seemingly endless, snow clad mountains of the little country Austria. If you look up the history of Kugelhopf, it tells you clearly that it is a bread popular in Germany, France, Austria, Hungary, Craotia and Serbia but I chose to conveniently ignore all other countries except for Austria on this recipe :-), sounds totally partial but I am a die hard romantic and also I think Austria clinches ownership of this deliciously buttery, flaky bread because of the following trivia - Gugelhupf was the sweet chosen to represent Austria in the Cafe Europe initiative of the Austrian presidency of the European Union, on Europe Day in 2006. Maybe Maria and the Von Trapp family ate this bread every day with coffee (or was it tea?)..

So now shall we get back to today's recipe? Oh, I guess I was the one running wayward, so let me get myself back here. This recipe came to me as part of the monthly challenges from Eggless baking group. Though I haven't been regular (sorry Gayathri) but trying to bake & post as much as I can given the hectic life right now. As soon as I saw this recipe (I swear that was before I knew the history and its connection to Austria and to Sound of Music :-)), I thought I would make it, for one the amount of butter didn't sound as big as the Austrian mountains and the procedure seemed really simple.

This is an almost 'no-knead' bread, I say almost because you don't plunk the dough on the counter top and start using that familiar back & forth sway motion exercising your biceps. Instead you use a spatula to move the dough around and bring it to a softer, pliable consistency. What I didn't sign up for though was starting off with a hard mass of dough and making it move around in the bowl. It being a Saturday, totally worked in my favor. BH was up after a good night's sleep and was game for helping me out, we took turns turning the dough (he did it for 3 mins and I took the next 30 secs, then back to him and so on.., you get the picture :-)) and as always great team work produces great results.

Bottom line, get the spouse to help you around when making this bread, save yourselves a sore arm later in the day :-).

I used the measurements Gayathri gave but added a few things to make it bit more livelier. I did the conversions from the gms to cups since I do not own a kitchen scale and was a little apprehensive that my measurements may not have been accurate but they were on the mark. The bread is mildly sweet, deliciously flaky with a super texture. I served it with a spoon of orange marmalade on the side as an after dinner dessert for cousins visiting us yesterday. Our little 1 year old niece seemed to enjoy it as did her parents and brother :-).

What do you need to make Kugelhopf? 
3 & 1/3 cups All purpose flour
2 & 1/4 Tsp instant (rapid rise) yeast
1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup + 1 Tbsp milk
2/3 cup butter milk
7 Tbsp butter (softened to room temperature)
1/2 Tsp salt
1 Tbsp raisins
1/4 Tsp cinnamon powder

How do you make Kugelhopf? 

• Add flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl. 

• With a spoon or fork mix well and make a hole in the center. 
• Add milk & butter milk into the hole and gently fold in the flour mixture. 

• You will get a lightly moist, crumbly mixture.
• Add the softened butter and mix everything together. 
• The dough will be a stiff lump at this stage. 

• Keep moving/mixing the dough with a spatula for 5-7 minutes until the texture softens. 
• Add cinnamon powder and raisins and give a mix. 

• Smear soft butter to the inner side of a tube or bundt cake pan. 
• Put the soft dough in it and level gently. 

• Cover it with a cling wrap and let it rise for 45mins to an hour or until it doubles in volume and looks light and poofy. 

• Preheat the oven to 375F, bake the bread for 30-35 minutes (mine took 35min to reach the golden brown all around)
• Take it out and let it stand on a wire rack for 5 mins before removing it from the pan. 

• Let it cool completely before slicing. 
• Enjoy it with a drizzle of honey or butter or a jam.  

 Notes: 

• Original recipe didn't have cinnamon or raisins, it is my addition. Feel free to skip, however they enrich the bread
• I added 1 Tbsp additional milk since the dough seemed very hard when I started to move it with the spatula initially. This could have been due to the consistency of my yogurt as I didn't thin it down rather used the home made yogurt by just whisking it with a fork. 
• Watch the oven towards the end of the bake time as oven temperatures differ. 

Zucchini muffin - Piccoli Dolci (Little dessert treats), read the post for relevance :-)

Since I threw in Italian verbiage out there in the post title, let me explain what it means and how it relates to what I have today. No, I haven't visited Italy (very much on my bucket list) and have not been going to any language classes either. We do like Italian food and favor Olive Garden franchises for their fresh baked bread and minestrone soup that comes with a side of a big bowl of salad. But what I love most is the decadent Tiramasu after the food, so always keep some place for it. Last time we went to this restaurant, we were all hungry and ended up gorging on the salad, bread and the entrees so dessert was out of question (well, almost). As we looked at the dessert menu, the thing that caught my attention was this new phrase, 'Piccoli Dolci' and really enticing pictures of cute, small size desserts - layered cake, mousse, pastry creams and berries, sounds delicious? ofcourse. Piccoli Dolci means small cakes or little dessert treats in Italian. I made the big sacrifice of not ordering my usual Tiramasu and asked for a Piccoli Dolci. The dessert was small, served in a cup about the size of tea candle holders, and perfect for a sweet craving. Smaller the size, smaller the guilt. Yum!!

Why do I have that phrase in my post title today? I am not serving you any Italian desserts but I liked the way the phrase sounded and wanted to use it somewhere on the blog :-). When I was making these muffins, I ended up using the tiny muffin liners (or holders in my case) and made them 'one gulp' size. It is little, it is a dessert, so there you go.

On to the recipe itself, though the title says, zucchini muffins, zucchini is just one of the ingredients in it. This moist and deliciously sweet muffin is loaded with so much of tropical flavors and goodness that I was going to call it my 'tropical muffin' :-). But wanted to keep the original name and titled it zucchini muffins.

I harvested 2 more zucchinis over the weekend, now that I have a whole lot of recipes with zucchinis, I am just grateful for the bounty. What is better is that DD is not bored (not yet) of zucchinis, me thinks I can get away with feeding her the same vegetable over and over as long as I cleverly disguise it in different forms, shapes and tastes :-). So, the saga of zucchinis continues.

Last week when I shared a zucchini with a colleague at work, she made these muffins and brought them for me and the rest of the group to taste the next day. They were delicious with a flavor explosion in the mouth. You know what happened next, don't you? I asked (may be pestered) for the recipe and got it. Armed with fresh zucchinis, this recipe was the first thought and since we were planning to visit our little nephew and niece, I went ahead and made a batch. Given the size of individual muffins I made, I ended up getting almost 30 muffins, believe me when I say they are perfect size for kids and adults alike. I halved the original recipe and made it egg free by using my trusted egg replacement. See below for details. Thanks M for the delicious recipe. Never imagined zucchini in such a treat.

I took some to share with my Chinmaya kids today, they all loved it and polished off the mini muffins. I also heard back from the cousins that they enjoyed the muffins too. So I changed my blog post plan a tiny bit and ended up writing about the muffins instead of what I had planned before :-).

This recipe incorporates a lot of fruity flavors but the end result is surprisingly homogeneous with all of them playing together synchronously. You have bites of fresh pineapple and craisins(dried cranberries) in addition to the nutty flavor from coconut. Very easy to put together and yummy to relish.

What do you need to make zucchini muffins? 
1.5 cup All purpose flour
1 cup sugar (reduce it by 1 Tbsp if you want it mildly sweet)
1/2 cup canola oil
3/4 cup grated zucchini
1/3 cup unsweetened apple sauce (this is my egg replacement, 1 egg=1/4 cup AS)
2 Tbsp fresh orange juice
1/2 Tsp vanilla essence
1  Tsp orange zest
1/2 Tsp baking soda
1/8 Tsp salt
1/2 Tsp freshly ground cinnamon
1/3 cup coconut flakes (I used the sweetened variety)
3 Tbsp chopped pineapple
1/2 cup craisins or raisins - chopped roughly

How do you make zucchini muffins? 

• Grate zucchini and keep aside. 
• In a mixing bowl, put sugar, apple sauce, orange juice, orange zest, vanilla and oil and mix it for 2 mins with a whisk or fork. Do not expect it to become creamy but aim to get a homogeneous mixture of ingredients. 

• Sift the flour, salt, cinnamon powder and baking soda together and fold it into the wet mixture in the bowl. 

• Add the coconut, pineapple, craisins/raisins and grated zucchini

• Give a good mix to combine all ingredients, spoon them into individual muffin containers.
• Preheat the oven to 325F and bake the muffins for about 20 minutes (watch them closely during the last couple of minutes as oven temp vary a lot). 
• Mine took 20 minutes and the tooth pick inserted in the middle came out clean. 

• Take them out and let cool a little bit before serving. 

Notes: 

• You can replace orange juice with pineapple juice if you prefer. 
• I am thinking (not tried yet) that you can replace zucchini with bottle gourd gratings. 
• Original recipe baked this mixture as a loaf and suggested a bake time of 50 minutes, muffins bake much faster. 

Zucchini Bread - summer treat perfect for Indian palate

As most of you know we locked up home and went merrily on an India trip recently. While no amount of bribing would have made us trade that trip for something else, 2 things that bothered us were leaving behind Flora in her doggy care for 3 weeks, we had never done that before and the maximum she had stayed out at a stretch had been 4 days of vacation. The completely trusting girl she is, she went in happily with her care taker when BH dropped her off sniffing her food bag we had given, not sure what went on in her mind for the rest of the 3 weeks though. We missed her all the time, hoping and praying she would do alright. She came back home the same day we landed, jumped all over on us and went to sleep in her bed for an entire week getting up only for food :-), she is back to her routine of chasing birds and squirrels all over the back yard now and jumping deftly over my veggie patches to avoid stepping on the tomatoes, zucchinis and cucumbers. All is well!

Ah, those vegetable and flower plants were the second concern, it was summer, basking in the natural flood of light and warmth, the plants were taking shape and sprouting up well as we got ready to leave. The trip was planned last minute and there was not much we could do in terms of preparing, thankfully a cousin who lives in the town offered to come by every few days and make sure the plants were not dry. BH went ahead and put sprinklers for the plants as a backup and cousin P true to his word made his visits and kept the indoor plants thriving, thanks P, we owe you one on this.

We came back 3 weeks later to find 3 big, ready to be picked zucchinis and several tomatoes in different stages of ripening along with a bounty of greens and lettuce that had grown literally crazy :-). There was nothing we could do with the lettuce but pull them out with the roots as the plants were about 4.5 ft tall and flowering, No pictures however as the bad state of backyard didn't give us any time to stop and do the photo shoot. Our friendly neighbor Mr.J swirls his lawn mower into our front yard as he does his yard and BH returns the favor next time around, so while the front looked decent, the fenced backyard resembled a mini unkempt jungle of sorts! All chores taken care of and back to healthy selves, we are enjoying harvesting multiple batches of the veggies. The cucumbers are petite but very tasty, haven't had that taste in a long while, they are almost like the Indian kheera/kakdi, pop them in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, cut and enjoy the cool, crisp bites, it doesn't get more 'locally grown' than this ;-). Not much luck with eggplants though :-(, still waiting.

So, I am not buying any more tomatoes this summer and definitely not any summer squashes or zucchinis :-), I have more than we can eat and distribute, the problem on hand is to find good ways to use them. Dal - done, pachadi - done, stir fry - done, pizza topping - done, veg crab cakes - done, so what else do I make from these really flavorful and yummy zucchinis? With the entire universe at my finger tips (thanks to Google), I searched and found innumerable recipes and sifting through them for vegetarian, egg free, preferably non sugary, the list got considerably small. But I landed on this bread which seemed like a miracle, easy being the middle name and versatile, the tag line of this particular recipe (ignore that completely cheesy talk, I do that sometimes)! But, truth be told this recipe adapts itself in so many different ways that you can create a new taste every time if you wanted and it was a perfect fit as I was looking for a non-sweet version of the recipe. It seemed a tad bit bland for my taste, so I added a little bit of this, pinch of that to personalize it and here it is, a definite keeper especially when it is such a wonderful way to consume those zucchinis.

What do you need to make Zucchini bread? 
Recipe adapted from: http://roxanashomebaking.com/zucchini-bread-vegan-recipe/
1 cup tightly packed grated zucchini (1/2 big zucchini)
2 green chilies - finely chopped
1/2 Tsp grated ginger
1 Tbsp finely chopped cilantro
1 Tblsp pine nuts - lightly toasted
1 Tblsp walnuts chopped - lightly toasted
3 cups bread flour
1+1/4 Tsp rapid rise yeast
1 Tsp salt
1/2 Tsp fresh ground black pepper
Butter to brush

How do you make Zucchini bread? 

• Wash, remove the ends of the zucchini. 
• Grate about 1 cup (along with the green skin (it makes for beautiful color and is nutritious)
• Set it aside for 10 minutes. 
• Squeeze handfuls of zucchini and collect the water. 
• I got about 1/4 cup and 2 Tbsp of zucchini juice. 
• Warm the zucchini juice for about 15 seconds or until luke warm
• Take the bread flour in a mixing bowl, make a well in the center, sprinkle yeast and add the warm zucchini juice. 
• Mix gently and leave it to proof for about 5-7 minutes. See alternative way of proofing yeast in the notes below. 

• Now add the grated zucchini (squeeze out any additional juice if it looks damp), chopped nuts, salt, green chilies, ginger and chopped cilantro. 
• Bring everything together and hold off on adding water or zucchini juice. 
• Start kneading to make a dough and zucchini will continue to leave juice. Add the reserved juice only if needed. 
• Make a smooth dough and knead it for about 6-8 minutes to make a soft dough. 

• Cover and keep it to rise until it doubles in volume (mine took about 1.5 hours)
• Pre heat the oven to 375F.
• Take the risen dough out, punch it down, knead for a couple of minutes and divide into 2 balls. 

• Let them rest (provide space between the 2 balls to rise) covered for 20-30 minutes. The balls will look fluffier at that point. 
• Bake for 30-35 minutes (watch the oven for the last 10 minutes as it may vary) or until the top starts to get a nice golden hue. 
• Take it out and brush it with butter all over and leave it to cool down. 

• Once cool, cut into slices and enjoy with a pat of butter. 
• DD loved eating toasted slices with salted butter and a sprinkle of chutney pudi :-)

Notes: 

• Replace walnuts and pine nuts with any nuts of choice, I used them since I had them on hand. 
• You can add finely chopped dill leaves or lightly roasted onion but I liked the fresh zucchini flavor and left it untouched.
• Proofing yeast: If you are not sure of the yeast, it is better to proof it outside. Add yeast to a cup and add the warmed juice with a pinch of sugar, stir and let it rise for 5-7 minutes, When bubbles form and the mixture becomes frothy, add it to the bowl with flour. 
• Use the zucchini juice as the liquid in the recipe as much as possible to retain flavor, use water only if you run out of the juice. 

UPDATED ON 9/2/2014

One of my friends from work M who is an avid baker and a Zucchini lover herself, not only made this bread with enhancements but also brought slices for me to taste. One of her variations had chopped Dill & spring onions while the other had cheese and jalapeno in addition to the ingredients listed above. Both tasted delicious. Total euphoria for the blogger in me :-) and I went ahead to make another batch of this yummy bread, adding oil roasted chopped onion and dill leaves, doubled the quantity of nuts and the result was a super delicious loaf (well, 2 loaves) of zucchini bread. We are enjoying it with a topping of pickle :-). So if you want to make this bread super flavorful, roast 1/4 cup finely chopped onion, 2 green chilies and 1 cup of chopped Dill leaves in a Tbsp of oil until onion becomes limp and Dill gives out a wonderful aroma. Let cool and add this to the dough along with grated zucchini. 

Potato soup - a 'soup'er bowl of potatoes for a hearty, healthy soup

Didn't I just talk about Summer and summer solstice in my last post? I did and showed you pictures of gorgeous summer too. And yet here I am with a soup recipe which is typically made on a cold day. Well, that is typical of where I live and one of the reasons I love this place. Summer started off bright & cheery last week but then the weekend has gone back to the old ways of gray skies and occasional showers bringing the temperature down a bit and making you crave for something warm & hearty. While pongal/huggi/khichdi is my all time favorite comfort food, a hot bowl of soup with a side of good, crusty bread brings a smile to the faces in my family and it saves a lot of time and effort in cooking, a win-win for a week day dinner. Less cooking, less cleaning and everyone is happy :-). And then it is perfect for the weekend before the travel when you are trying to finish up those last remaining pieces of vegetables and the potatoes in your pantry.

Did I say travel? Yep and now you know the reason why my spirits are high and the grin won't stop quickly even on a cold, cloudy day. I am off for a vacation in a couple of days and excited beyond expression, looking forward to seeing family, sitting down holding hands together, eat a little , talk a lot and do everything you do when you go home. So my posts will be somewhat infrequent but I will keep increasing the size of my pictures folders and draft posts until I can sit down and polish them nicely for presentation. Happy Summer everyone, keep talking, stay healthy.

I have been exploring the Seattle downtown market area on my way to & from work whenever possible and have found many hidden treasures by way of small, local businesses. There is a bakery called '3 girls bakery' in the market area which bakes and sells fresh bread. If you go towards the evening, they are almost always out of bread which kind of indicates they make bread fresh daily :-). I have got a few French baguettes, a super hearty whole wheat raisin bread which have both become our favorites. But we all love their mini sour dough breads, they are just the right size for us if we share and works as a beautiful soup holder for soup of any kind.

Soups are not common in Indian cuisine, I tasted them only after we moved here and what a variety of soups there is if you love the feeling it creates as the hot spoonful goes down the throat and lights up a tired body on a cold day. Yumm! I used to think there were not many vegetarian soups available but since the time I started making soups I have experimented with different vegetables and spices/herbs to create soups that we all love. If you love veggies and herbs, there is no limit to the number of soup variations you can create.

I have a few soups already on the blog (check out the recipe index for links) but today's is an especially creamy and delicious soup with crumbly bites of potato chunks and broccoli that will make you feel rested as you gulp down a bowlful (or a breadful :-)). I first tasted this soup in an office party, a colleague had brought this for the vegetarians in the group. I took a small serving hesitantly but went back to it eagerly for a second and third time. While you can eat it paired with any bread, sourdough makes a great combination as it lends that tangy taste to the slightly bland soup. And it is super easy to put together and can be customized to taste.

Now that the monsoons have reached most parts of India and while the weather is still mild in most parts of the USA, this soup makes a wonderful dinner with minimal work. I have used fresh oregano in this recipe as I have a plant that is really growing wild :-) but you can substitute with dry oregano. Go ahead, give it a try and let me know how you liked it. We kicked off our weekend last Friday with this yummy soup in a sourdough bowl and polished it all up nicely.

What do you need to make potato soup?
3 medium sized potatoes
1 small piece of broccoli (optional but recommended)
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 clove of garlic (increase it if you like the flavor)
1/4 cup of chopped celery (optional, I like the flavor in my soups)
1 Tsp olive oil
1/2 cup milk
1 Tsp freshly ground black pepper powder
10-12 leaves of fresh oregano or 1/2 Tsp dried oregano
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
pinch of dry mango powder/amchur powder

How do you make potato soup?

• Wash, scrub and chop the potatoes into bite sized cubes. If using yukon gold or red potatoes (which have thin skins), I like to leave the skin on. 
• Chop broccoli into small florets.
• Chop onions and celery (if using).

• Heat a stock pot or soup pot on medium heat, add olive oil. 
• Add the chopped onion and let it sweat for a couple of minutes. 
• Add the celery and broccoli and stir fry them for another minute. 
• Add the potato pieces and continue to fry for another 2 minutes until the vegetables get coated well with oil and start to soften. 
• Add salt, 1/2 Tsp of black pepper powder. 
• If you are using dry oregano add it at this stage along with 3 cups of water. 
• Cover and let cook for 8-10 minutes until potatoes turn soft. 
• If you are using fresh oregano, add them after potatoes turn soft. 
• Simmer the stove, scoop out most of the vegetables into a blender jar, leave some potato and broccoli pieces for bite.

• Make a smooth paste of the cooked vegetables, return them to the pot. 
• Add milk, adjust salt, pepper to taste and let it come to a boil. 
• Switch off and serve hot soup with bread or crackers. 
• I had a baby, sour dough bread I had bought, we used that as the soup holder. Rich, delicious soup with equally yummy bread made up for the rainy evening dinner. 

Notes: 

• You can add chopped carrots to this recipe. 
• You can use butter instead of olive oil for more flavor and ofcourse more fat :-)
• If you want a vegan version, replace milk with almond or cashew milk. 

Minestrone soup - a deliciously hodge podge Sunday brunch

I not only love to bake bread but also enjoy eating different kinds of bread. The crustier and hardier they are, I like them better. It is no wonder I am always willing and ready to try out new places as long as there is a promise of good bread. It was on one such expeditions that I went to "Olive Garden", a popular chain of Italian food in North America and on BH's recommendation tried the unlimited soup and salad lunch there. But I mostly ended up filling myself with the soft, warm bread they serve at the beginning of every meal.

Olive Garden has been a regular joint for us as family as we can all satisfy our veg and non-veg preferences. Over time, I dug my spoon into the piping hot minestrone soup and fell in love with the various flavors in that super delicious vegetarian soup. Until I tasted minestrone soup, my view of soup was limited to the 'Tomato soup' from India which is creamy, tangy but doesn't have any floating vegetables. The minestrone knocked out all my notions about soup and opened up my eyes to the world of soupy possibilities. Minestrone has been a favorite for many years now and is part of my order whenever we go to Olive Garden along with their Eggplant Parmigiana.

I am not much of a pasta person, nor is cheese my favorite. Don't judge me :-), that is who I am. I order eggplant parmigiana, as soon as the plate comes, slide out the hot cheesy layer off the top of the eggplants and eat the crispy baked eggplants with black pepper sprinkled on top of them. Why order the dish when I don't eat half of it, you may ask and also when I take out the best part of the dish according to DD. I do not mean any disrespect to the recipe or the chef but I just don't enjoy the gooey cheese on top :-). I love the fresh salad though with the grated cheese on top that they invariably offer to every guest and that I politely decline every single time.

I had it on my list of things to do for a long time to make the minestrone soup at home. I collected a few recipes but every time I thought of making it, something wouldn't align such as it was the hot summer and not soup weather, or I didn't have something in the refrigerator/pantry that I deemed necessary for a good minestrone and etc.., so it kept getting pushed and finally today made it. DD says she doesn't mind having a lunch such as this every day for the rest of her life which I take as a compliment. So here I am with some pictures and a recipe for minestrone soup. A totally vegetarian and full of veggie goodness and flavors of fresh and dried herbs, this soup makes a very filling lunch. Pair it with some bread and you have an Italian lunch in your own kitchen.

Here is what happened to the bread, I have a wonderful pizza dough recipe (source: Peter Reinhart) that I have been using for a while now - will post the recipe sometime and I also use the same dough for making bread sticks, they turn as soft and delicious as the warm breads served in Olive Garden. I made a big batch of the pizza dough earlier this week and was planning to keep aside half of it for the bread sticks but since both BH & DD loved the texture of the pizza, they ended up making it twice in the week and the dough got over which put a small dent in my plans of an Italian brunch for the weekend. But like I said, stars were aligned perfectly this time for my minestrone soup and so when I was strolling in the food market here yesterday, I found some freshly baked French baguettes being filled into the basket, picked one up and came home. A slight change of plans, no Olive Garden style bread sticks but I made some fragrant bruschetta by slicing the baguette and it was a wonderful side for the extremely delicious minestrone soup.

Minestrone is a very versatile soup, it is almost like throw in any vegetables you have and still tastes good recipe. I used Giada's recipe from here, eliminating all non-vegetarian ingredients and making some changes to suit my personal palate. So mine is a completely vegetarian soup and tastes just like the one you get in Olive Garden. Try it out yourself and let me know how you liked it.

Here is why I call it hodge podge brunch, though it was Italian in every intent and theme, I used French baguette to make the bruschetta, made a very Indian, non-cheesy version of crispy eggplant and a fresh veggie salad that was dressed with a dressing from nowhere :-). I also had a bunch of fresh, organic fingerling potatoes that I par boiled and sauteed in olive oil and coated with chutney pudi and garnished with fresh cilantro :-).

What do you need to make Minestrone soup?
Makes 4-5 servings
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup finely chopped onion/shallots
2-3 medium sized carrots
1 medium zucchini
2 celery sticks
2 cups (tightly packed) greens such as chard, spinach or Kale
2 cloves of garlic
1 medium sized potato
2 big tomatoes
1.5 cup cooked canellini beans (Italian white kidney beans)
1/2 cup cooked pasta (typically shells are used)
4-6 basil leaves
1 sprig of fresh Rosemary
A small piece (about 1/2 Oz) of good quality Parmesan cheese
1 Tsp salt (adjust to taste)
1/2 Tsp freshly ground black pepper

How do you make Minestrone soup? 

• Wash, peel and chop carrots into bite sized cubes. 
• Wash, remove hard ends and chop celery into bite sized pieces. 
• Peel, crush and chop garlic. 
• Roughly chop the greens. 
• Par boil tomatoes for 3-4 minutes and once cool, remove the skin and chop into chunks. Reserve the water for use in soup. 
• Puree 1/2 cup of cooked beans with 1/4-1/2 cup of water into a smooth paste. 
• Wash and chop zucchini and potato (i use the skin) into bite sized chunks.
• Heat a sturdy pan or soup pot with olive oil. 
• Add the chopped onions and saute for 3-4 minutes until it softens. 
• Add chopped carrots and celery, saute for 5-6 minutes until they turn just soft. 
• Add chopped garlic, zucchini, potatoes, cooked beans and tomatoes. 
• Add salt, pepper and 3-5 cups of water, piece of cheese and pureed beans. 
• Simmer for 1.5-2 hours. Slower you cook, better the soup tastes. 
• When you reach the last half hour of cooking, add the chopped greens and let it wilt. 
• Add cooked pasta about 10 minutes before you switch off along with chopped basil leaves. 
• Switch off, cover and let stand for 10-15 minutes. 
• Serve piping hot soup with a side of bread and garnished with extra grated cheese on top. 

Notes: 

• I used canned beans which are pre cooked and salted. I wash them a couple of times under running water and drain before adding to the soup. 
• Usually shell or bow pastas are used in Minestrone, you can skip this totally without affecting the taste. If using cook pasta following package instructions and add it towards the last 10 minutes or so before switching off the soup. 
• You can use any greens mentioned above but the cooking time for chard or kale might be a little longer than spinach, so use your judgement. 
• Adding Parmesan cheese is optional but gives a really authentic and rich taste to the soup. 
• I like the slightly acidic taste of celery in soups and add them to most of my soups.