At his home in Santa Cruz, California, Chef David Kinch enjoys eating simple, fresh food from the farmer’s market and recipes that he’s discovered on travels. One of the places he frequently returns to is the French and Italian Riviera, where his good friend, Chef Mauro Colagreco, runs one of the top-rated restaurants in the world, Mirazur.
When he’s not marrying his love of travel and food, collaborating with Michelin-starred chefs around the world and running his three-starred Michelin restaurant, bakery, and newest project, Mentone, Kinch can be found preparing delicious meals at home or with friends, such as this emerald-colored minestrone.
“It’s a classic dish with pesto stirred in at the last moment,” Kinch says. “There’s a couple of different starches in there. It has beans, potatoes, and pasta in it – or it can. But that’s essentially it. It's one of my favorite things to eat.”
This recipe comes from his new cookbook, At Home in the Kitchen, an ode to the rustic and unchallenging cooking he carries on at home, when he’s not thinking about the elaborate and intricate dishes that foodie films are made of. “Everything in the book are things I really love to eat. There’s not a lot of filler in there,” he promises.
Chickpea Minestrone, Genovese-Style
Ingredients:
12 cups chickpea stock, chicken stock, or water
1⁄4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 bunch spinach, coarsely chopped
1 bunch Swiss chard, thick stems discarded and leaves coarsely chopped
1 bunch Tuscan kale, thick stems discarded and leaves coarsely chopped
2 small zucchini, cut into 1⁄4-inch slices
2 medium Yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1⁄2-inch slices
2 small Japanese eggplants or 1 globe eggplant, peeled, quartered, and cut into
1-inch pieces
1 baseball-sized turnip, peeled, quartered, and cut into 1⁄4-inch slices
3⁄4 cup macaroni
2 cups cooked chickpeas, or 1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3 tablespoons Seven-Ingredient Pesto
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 lemon wedge
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano for serving
Method:
- In a large pot on high heat, bring the stock and olive oil to a boil. Add the spinach, chard, kale, zucchini, potatoes, eggplant and turnip and turn the heat to low to maintain a gentle simmer.
- Cook, uncovered for 1 hour.
- Add the macaroni and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Add the chickpeas and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the pesto. Season with salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon to taste.
- Ladle the minestrone into bowls. Serve with a bowl of the freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on the side.
Seven-Ingredient Pesto, “The Right Way”
Ingredients:
1⁄2 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1⁄2 cup finely grated Pecorino Romano
1 clove garlic
Flaky sea salt
3 tablespoons pine nuts
2 cups lightly packed basil leaves (young and tender preferred)
1⁄4 to 1⁄2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Method:
- Cool your mortar and pestle in your refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. (The two worst things you can do to pesto are to overheat it and use too much.)
- In a small bowl, stir together the cheeses, and set aside.
- Place a folded towel beneath the cold mortar to allow it to rotate more easily. Using the pestle, mash the garlic with a pinch of salt to form a paste.
- Add the pine nuts and begin stirring the pestle aggressively around the center to force the ingredients up the sides of the mortar. Turn the bowl as you pound the pestle down along the sides.
- When the pine nuts and garlic have formed a paste, begin adding the basil in small handfuls, adding a pinch of salt occasionally to act as an abrasive.
- Continue to stir the ingredients up the sides of the mortar, rotate the bowl, and hit the pestle along its sides. With a little patience, gravity will do the work for you. Continue with this process until you’ve added all of the basil and no large leaves remain. The leaves will be a variety of sizes—imperfection is part of the beauty of a handmade pesto.
- Add the cheese mixture in small spoonfuls, continuing to stir, rotate, and pound the ingredients together.