The restaurant had relocated to the other side of the building and presumably some if not all of the staff had changed, but the "Italian Meat and Vegetable Soup" was still on the menu, yay! In fact the menu had been updated and there was another name for the soup provided. Another clue to the riddle behind the secret soup that had haunted me for a decade! The decoded soup name was... ready for it? Minestrone!
I felt a bit disappointed to be honest. Isn't Minestrone one of the most common soups in the world? Had I waited ten years and traveled thousands of miles just to have some run of the mill Minestrone soup? In fairness the Japanese versions of food are sometimes, often, different than the American versions of the same food, for example Tacos with BBQ Sauce on them and Spaghetti with ketchup and butter for sauce (which tastes way better than it sounds)
This Minestrone soup is made without any beans or pasta and although "Meat" is one of the primary words in the title, it's difficult to find in the soup! I separated some of the soup into another bowl so I might reverse engineer it. Can you identify the mystery meat?
The known and suspected ingredients are as follows:
Tomato
Onion
Celery
Potato
Spinach Leaf
Chicken Stock?
Tomato soup?
Ground Pork?/Bacon?/Pancetta?/Beef?
Heavy Cream?
I attempted to recreate the soup and my creation was good, but not the same. The original soup (shown below) is a yellowish color which I can’t explain. Any ideas?
