Year after year after I married, had children and worked full time, I took liberties with my mother's recipes. I began to use frozen meals, canned products, simplified version of the dishes she cooked. My minestrone began to taste like the water-down version in a can of Campbell soup.
I stopped eating the minestrone I prepared.
My husband, raised on Chef-boy-R-D tought everything tasted fine.
I was too tired to care, actually. After an entire day on high heels and tight girdles-yes, the picture is important because my legs and calves suffered-walking around a classroom of unruly teens, I wanted to collapse at the end of the day, not fix a meal that took hours to develop all its flavors.
I opted for quick meals, and knew not what I was doing to our health.
Then, after we visited a Wolfgang Puck cafe in Santa Monica, and I saw how the chef sauteed the vegetables on the side before adding them to the cooked beans, after I tasted the authentic minestrone of my childhood, I swore never to take shortcuts again.
It's just not the same thing.
So, I have to give credit where credit is due. I'm plagiarizing Chef Puck's recipe. It is also the original recipe my mother passed down to me. She would be proud of me.
Should you wish to see this recipe, it's on my Real Food blog.
