Soupe au Pistou - Provençal Vegetable Soup with Basil – Vegan version

👨‍🍳 Method

For the Fried onion

1. 1
   Heat the olive oil in a pot over medium heat.

   ⚙ Pan-fryingStovePot
2. 2
   Add the onion and carrot and fry 5 minutes, stirring now and then, until the onion is soft and translucent and starts to turn golden at the edges. If it browns too fast, lower the heat.

   ⚙ Adding to the hot fat and fryingStove

   💡Add by cooking time: what needs long (onion, carrot, meat) goes in first, and what burns fast (garlic, dry spices) goes in last, only until fragrant.

To assemble

1. 3
   Add the tomatoes, zucchini, green beans and stock and bring to a boil.

   Stove
2. 4
   Turn down the heat and simmer 15 minutes.

   ⚙ SimmeringStove

   💡A gentle simmer, not a boil: a hard boil dries the food out and clouds it, a slow simmer cooks it evenly.
3. 5
   Add the peas and pasta and cook 10 more minutes, until the pasta is tender.

   Stove

   💡Hard vegetables (carrots, celery, potatoes) cook from the start; zucchini and pasta go in at the end so they don't fall apart.

   💡Small pasta keeps absorbing liquid even after cooking: if you're not serving right away, cook it separately and add it to each bowl.
4. 6
   Season with salt and black pepper, taste and adjust.
5. 7
   Grind the leaves in a food processor with the garlic.

   ⚙ Grinding in a Food ProcessorFood processor

   💡In a food processor, grind in short pulses and check between pulses: it's easy to go from coarse to paste. (Sesame for tahini, on the other hand, is ground continuously.)
6. 8
   Add the Parmesan and grind.

   Food processor
7. 9
   Add the olive oil in a thin stream, while Tahini, until to a smooth sauce.

   ⚙ Fat in a Thin StreamFood processor

   💡Pesto keeps in the fridge about two weeks in a closed jar, covered with a layer of olive oil. The top layer darkens from the air, and that doesn't mean it has spoiled.

   💡The thin stream is everything: fat that goes in too fast can't bind, and the sauce breaks. For mayonnaise and hollandaise, if this happens, start with a fresh yolk and slowly add the broken sauce to it; if the sauce is too thick, thin it with a teaspoon of water.
8. 10
   Serve the hot soup in bowls, with a big spoonful of pesto on top of each bowl.

   Ladle