Ministry-one

Minimal preamble for once. I've never made soup before, and I fancied giving it a shot, so... I did.

Here's what went into it

First up, chop all your veg (celery, carrot, leek, red onion, chilli pepper). I'm not a fan of really chunky soups, so I diced it all pretty finely. Pre-heat a massive pot while you chop, then throw it all in there.

Give that a couple of minutes to reduce down a little, before opening up your tomato puree, and add a tbsp of that into your mix. Open up your tin of plum tomatoes, and chop them up finely by plunging some scissors into the can and snipping away at the innards, blood-red juices spattering your clothes.
Pour the full tin into your pot, and get stirring!

 

This is the point where you can decide to either keep your soup nice and vegetarian-friendly, and skip the 'dump in a tonne of animal parts' stage. But fuck that, I can't eat anything that doesn't have corpse in it. Fry up some bacon, a minestrone standard, cut it into tiny pieces before adding to your pot.

And since I recently returned from Barcelona, which was heaven for a spicey smoked sausage fiend like myself, I can't resist adding some chorizo to this already thick-as-fuck mix. So... do that, too.

Boil up some water to make a stock with. Ideally, if I'd had more time, I would have used a fresh chicken stock made with real chicken, buuut... I was hungry, and lazy, and I wanted to get this made as fast as possible. At the same time as your stock water is boiling, smash up some pasta into small pieces. I used my fists because I'm just cool like that, but probably best to just lightly smack it with a rolling pin while it's still in the bag to break it up, if you're not quite as angry at pasta as I am.

Pour in your chicken stock, shortly followed by adding your pasta, stir well, and leave to heat through for a further ten minutes. Once it's all thickened up nicely, either grate some fresh parmesan, or do what I did and cheat, using the (still fresh) pre-grated stuff. Chop some parsley into tiny pieces for garnishing purposes, and serve!

If this was 2004, I would have more to say about the band that coincides with my latest terrible pun title. I used to fucking love Ministry. Then shortly after I did, they came back all heavy-handed political messages and uninspired songs, so I swiftly fell out of love. Psalm 69 is still a terrifying, stomping, corroded banger of a record though. Those fucking robot-Bonham drums!