Helen's veg bag minestrone soup

The contents of my fridge suggested a minestrone soup  so I did a quick search for a recipe. There are thousands of variations on-line so I decided that my recipe was as valid as anyone else's. So here it is - one more to add to the thousands!

Serves 4 -5

1 onion

2 carrots

1 clove garlic

1 head of fennel

teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 tin tomatoes

handful of cherry tomatoes

750g broad beans (about 200g when podded)

75g wholewheat spaghetti

1 litre veg stock

Some tinned pitted black olives

fresh basil

(Broad beans, onion and carrots from the veg bag, fennel from The Kitchen Garden in Littlestoke via True Food Co-op))

- chop the onions and carrots in a food processor and fry gently in some olive oil

- Add crushed garlic, thinly sliced fennel  and oregano and continue cooking for a few minutes

- Add the tinned tomatoes, halved cherry tomatoes and stock.

- After about 1/2 an hour add the spaghetti

- 5 minutes later add the shelled broad beans and olives

- once the spaghetti and beans are cooked stir in some fresh basil and serve with Parmesan cheese.

Just a note on the broad beans, because I wanted to cook them in the soup I took off the inner skins before adding them. This was very time consuming!  What I normally do is cook the beans and then take off the skins which is much easier. I think if I made this again I would boil the beans separately, take off the skins and then add them to the soup. The photo shows a broad bean before and after taking off the inner skin. If you do want to do it when they are raw I found the best way was to hold it by the stalk bit (on the bottom of the bean in the photo) nick the other end with my thumb nail and then squeeze the bean out.