Lasagna Soup Recipe
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Recipe Overview
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Serves: 4-6 people
Ingredients Needed
- 3 teaspoons olive oil
- 1 large white or brown onion
- 5 cloves garlic, peeled and finely diced
- 250g/8.8ozs lean ground beef or turkey
- 250g/8.8oz Italian pork sausage or pork mince (see seasoning below)
- 600g/21flozs marinara or tomato pasta sauce
- 3 tablespoons tomato paste
- 4-5cups chicken or beef stock/broth (depending on how thick you want your soup)
- 125g/4ozs curly lasagne or curly fettuccine broken into thirds
- 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar (or to taste)
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 3 tablespoons, chopped, fresh basil
- 150g/5ozs ricotta or cottage cheese
- 50g/1.7ozs parmesan cheese
Step-By-Step Instructions
Step 1 - Add oil to a large cast iron pot set on medium heat. Add onions and saute until soft and fragrant but not too caramelised. Add garlic and saute for 1 minute. Then turn up to medium high heat and add the meat. Use a wooden spoon to make sure to break it up well into a fine mince and saute for around 6 minutes.
Step 2 - Add the sauce and the broth and bring to a simmer. Add in the pasta noodles (add each in separately so that they don't stick together), fennel seeds, smoked paprika, salt, sugar, pepper and basil and bring to a simmer again and cook on medium heat with the lid on stirring occasionally to ensure that the pasta is submerged and cooking through. While the pasta is cooking, blend the ricotta with the parmesan cheese.
Step 3 - After 15 minutes the pasta should be cooked. Ladle the soup into bowls and add a dollop of the ricotta parmesan cream on top of each bowl.
Italian Pork Mince
- 500g/1.1lbs pork mince
- 1.5 teaspoons fennel seeds
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Step 1 - Knead all ingredients together.
Personal Note
I remember my friend Queen Viv telling me all about how to make soup and how you need to add layers of flavour to soup and that was the key to a truly delicious soup. I stopped by her place the other day as she is a very handy seamstress and was helping me alter a skirt. She measured and pinned it for me and then we had a cup of tea in her living room with the winter sun streaming in through the enormous windows while her cat Voodoo scurried away, disturbed by the unwanted visitor.
It had been a while since we had caught up and she was telling me all about what she had been up to. She's about my mother's age and really she is closer to my personality than my mother who is very opposite to me. Queen Viv likes getting up to adventures and has a very rebellious side. She was telling me about how she visited the Southern Highlands of NSW where she brought a friend from New Zealand.
She wanted to show her friend a maze because she thought that it would be fun. When they arrived the woman at the maze told her that it was 3pm and that the maze was closed. I suppose they don't let people in close to 5pm in case they get lost and have to be found. But Queen Viv was not to be deterred. "Follow me," she told her friend and they snuck around to a side gate and entered the maze.
They had made a couple of turns before they realised that the woman was watching the maze from above. And she was very unhappy at these unwanted visitors. She then made her way down to the maze where she proceeded to chase and berate them.
"Was she yelling at you?" I asked laughing at the idea of Queen Viv and her friend trying to make their way through a maze away from the angry maze-keeper. "Yes!! But her voice told us where she was so we knew how to avoid her!" she nodded laughing. The woman never caught them and they managed to get away and sped off in the car. But it won't stop her from coming back another time, even if she is denied entry!
So tell me Dear Reader, do you like going for adventures? Would you have snuck into the maze?