Minestrone soup from scratch

By that I mean, you make it without store brought vegetable broth. It happened by accident. One day I ran out of vegetable broth and just sticked onto home-made stewed tomatoes and the result was excellent. Also guilt-free, due to the lack of extra sodium from canned stuff. 

Minestrone soup stands for thick Italian vegetable soup often with addition of pasta and rice in it. There is no set recipe for this soup, since it's made out of whatever vegetables are in season. That being said, below mentioned set of vegetables are my usual favorites that go into this soup.


This recipe serves six.


Ingredients
1/2 cup cooked pasta (preferably shell or macaroni type that can hold liquid in it)
1/2 cup overnight soaked and then pressure cooked kidney beans
2 cloves garlic minced
1/4 cup finely chopped onions
1/4 cup diced celery (let the leaves stay, they give the wonderful intense celery flavor)
1/4 cup diced carrot
1/4 cup green beans cubes
1/4 cup chopped cabbage
1/4 cup zucchini
1/4 cup bell peppers (any color is fine but I'm partial to red)
1/4 cup spinach
2 stems of fresh basil leaves or 1 teaspoon dried basil 
2 medium sized tomatoes
Salt, black pepper powder, red chili powder and sugar to taste


Method


Stewing tomatoes:
 Bring 4 cups of water to boil. 
 Make a cross mark on the tomatoes on the opposite side of the stem side and drop them in the boiling water for about 30 seconds.
 Now give them a shock treatment by dropping them immediately in the cold water. 
 This helps the easy peel of the outer skin of tomatoes. 
 Now dice them into large cubes and transfer back to the boiling water.
 Add salt, crushed black pepper, red chili powder and pinch of sugar to taste. And simmer it for 30 to 35 minutes.


Soup: 
 While tomatoes are stewing and your pasta is boiling and your kidney beans are being pressure cooked, you can start off with the soup preparation by cutting the above mentioned vegetables. 
 Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil
 Once hot, add minced garlic and toss it until golden brown and then add in chopped onions.
 Once translucent, add in celery, carrots, green beans and cabbage.
 Once tender and 50% done, add in zucchini and bell peppers.
 Once tender add in spinach, stewed tomatoes, boiled pasta, boiled kidney beans and basil leaves (or dry basil).
 Add salt and crushed black pepper powder to taste.
Add in another two cups of water and simmer it for 10 to 15 mins.

And your soup is all set to be gulped, well not literally since it's going to be hot and all. Anyways, enjoy :)