Minestrina di Spinaci – Marcella's Spinach Soup
The quickest soup I've even made
Welcome to Cooking with Marcella, each week I step back into the kitchens that shaped me, guided by Marcella Hazan’s unfussy, wholehearted recipes. I’m Lisa McLean, a naturopath and lifelong student of what real food can offer.
Do join me on this delicious exploration of Italian cooking.
“There are no food-processor soups, no cream-of-anything soups in the Italian repertoire. In no soup, however, is the texture, consistency, weight and physical identity of the ingredients ever wholly obliterated.”3
Marcella Hazan
I wasn’t feeling the best yesterday. A nagging kind of back pain had settled in, the sort that makes you slow everything down and abandon plans. I’d washed a big bunch of spinach the night before and left it in the salad spinner on the bench, forgotten in the quiet mess that discomfort brings.
The next morning, I spotted it. There’s no room in the fridge for a whole spinner of greens, and honestly, it felt easier to cook the spinach than to find space for it. So I reached for Marcella.
I opened “The Classic Italian Cookbook”1,2 and there it was, Spinach Soup. A five minute, no-fuss recipe with spinach, broth, milk, butter, Parmesan, and nutmeg. I didn’t have to go to the shops. I had a jar of homemade broth in the fridge (a staple in my kitchen), some aging sourdough, and a chunk of Parmigiano. I was set to go, and truly it only took 5 minutes, and it was ready to eat and I’d dealt with the spinner of spinach, a big win all round.
I followed the original recipe exactly yesterday, that’s the process here on this project. So this morning I took a look at the later version of this recipe that appears in “The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking”3. The only thing Marcella changes in this later recipe is the addition of 2 tablespoons of finely diced onion which is sauteed in the butter until pale golden, before adding the spinach. The recipe for crostini is included in this later version, where as it is suggested in the earlier version. I made my own simple and quick take on crostini, where I brush thin slices of sour dough with olive oil, then crisp them up in the sandwich press, which is a slightly healthier way to make crostini.
Reflecting on the recipe today, I would certainly make this again in the original form. I enjoyed the simplicity of the soup, it was soothing, gently sweet and softly textured, exactly what I needed.
Scroll down to the bottom of the post for the PDF file of the recipes
Spinach Soup
Minestrina di Spinaci
Serves 5–6
Ingredients
570 g (1¼ lb) frozen leaf spinach, thawed, or just under 1 kg (2 lb) fresh spinach
60 g (2 oz) butter
450 ml (¾ pint) broth, or 1 chicken stock cube dissolved in the same amount of water
450 ml (¾ pint) milk
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
25 g (1 oz) freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Salt, if needed
Crostini or toasted bread to serve
Method
If using fresh spinach, wash the spinach in several changes of water, to ensure it is cleaned. Shake it a little to drain some of the water, then pop it straight into a saucepan to wilt it down for a couple of minutes. It will steam in the water remaining on the leaves.
Drain the spinach briefly as is cools, then roll it into a bunch and chop it into rough pieces.
If you want to use onion, add the butter to a saucepan and sauté off the onion until pale golden, then follow in with the spinach.
If you are skipping the onion as I prefer, just add in the spinach to the butter along with the stock, milk and nutmeg and bring to a simmer before adding in the parmesan cheese.
Once the soup has simmered for one minute, check for seasoning and adjust as needed.
Serve immediately with crostini
My tip: I made quick crostini by brushing thin slices of sourdough with olive oil and toasting them in a sandwich press. You could just as easily do this under a hot grill or in a dry pan.
Fried Bread Squares For Soup
Crostini di pane per minestra
You don’t need much for these, just a few slices of good white bread and a little oil. They’re quick to make and bring a lovely crunch to the soft warmth of a vegetable soup.
Ingredients
A few slices of firm white bread (sourdough or pane di casa work well)
Light olive oil* or a neutral vegetable oil, for frying or brushing
*Note - Marcella suggests using vegetable oil in all of her recipes I read for crostini, but I would suggest that the healthiest choice would be a light EVOO with what we know now of the benefits of EVOO.
Method – two ways
To fry
Cut the crusts off the bread and slice into small cubes, about 1–1.5 cm. Heat a shallow layer of oil in a medium frying pan over medium heat, just enough to come halfway up the sides of the cubes. When the oil is hot enough to sizzle a test cube, add the rest in a single layer. Don’t crowd the pan. Turn them gently as they colour, until golden and crisp. Remove to paper towel or a wire rack to drain.
To toast (my usual method)
Slice bread thinly and brush lightly with olive oil on one side or both sides if you are feeling indulgent. Toast in a sandwich press or under a hot grill until golden and crisp. You can cut them into small squares after toasting if you'd like something more like a crouton. I like to keep them a bit bigger, so I can dip them into the soup.
Marcella’s Menu suggestions
This is a gentle soup. It opens the appetite without overwhelming it, and it has a softness that suits the beginning of a meal. Marcella notes that this spinach soup can precede almost any meat or poultry, but she especially recommends it alongside the following dishes.
One of the roasts of lamb, she offers several, including versions with garlic, rosemary, and juniper berries.
Costolettine di agnello fritte - Baby lamb cutlets, dipped in Parmesan batter and fried until golden.
Cervella fritta - Fried calf’s brains, a delicacy for those who enjoy the texture and richness of offal.
Fegato di vitello fritto - Breaded calf’s liver, quickly fried and served crisp and tender.
These are all second courses with a sense of occasion, rich, distinctively Italian, and balanced by the quiet green of the soup. As a nutritionist I wonder about the overload of iron in these pairings Marcella suggests, but who am I to interfere with these traditions.
Marcella Soup Series
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©Lisa McLean 2025 All photos by ©Lisa McLean
Recipe attribution on Cooking with Marcella - Marcella Hazan
References
I wonder if this would do well with arugula. I have a lot of that still in my garden.
I don't enjoy the texture of fresh spinach but I love tenneruma -- sorry I don't know if this is the Sicilian name or if it's Italian -- and I wonder if it would work? Might try it because they're in season now.