Pasta & Potato Soup, with Leeks

My version of the classic Italian minestra: Pasta e Patate

Italian cuisine is unequivocally best known for pasta, and for a very long time I didn’t pay any attention to their soup game. As a part Italian-American I am of course well-acquainted with the classic Minestrone soup, but it’s only in recent years that I learned about the five Italian minestras (or soups), only one of which is Minestrone. I started paying attention thanks to the one and only Marcella Hazan, but also to British expat-in-Rome, Rachel Roddy, whose book My Kitchen In Rome is a mainstay in both my kitchen, as I cook from recipes, but also in my library, as I relish in her sumptuous food writing.