Turkey Minestrone

Recipe: Turkey Minestrone

This recipe came from the summers I spent in New York teaching at Columbia University in the early seventies. Initially I was flattered by the appointment to teach at Columbia University, until I found that most faculty preferred to be elsewhere to avoid the heat and humidity of summer in New York. I had a modest apartment (modest means it was a room with a shared bathroom) on Amsterdam Avenue, two blocks from Columbia.

Amsterdam Avenue, New York 

Minestrone is an international favorite vegetarian soup. If you want to serve this tasty soup as a meal you may have to address the needs of the non-vegetarians. The addition of ground turkey provides a middle ground. The turkey is not serious red meat and still preserves the basic minestrone taste. This is a great end-of-Winter meal.

Ingredients

1- 1.25 pounds ground turkey

½ cup olive oil

1 bunch chopped kale or 2-3 cups shredded cabbage

4-5 medium potatoes chopped into one-inch cubes

4-6 stalks of chopped celery

4 medium carrots chopped into one-inch slices

2 bunches of chopped green onions

4 cups chicken broth

1 16oz. can Italian style diced tomatoes

2 chopped medium onions

2 16oz. cans of cannellini (white kidney) beans

2 teaspoons salt

1-teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

2 teaspoons dried parsley flakes

Options: 2 cloves of garlic, minced. Pasta e.g. 2 cups elbow macaroni and delete 2 of the potatoes.

Directions

Cook and brown turkey and chopped medium onions with half-cup olive oil.

Mix all ingredients and bring to a slow boil for 15 minutes while stirring well.

Place in a slow cooker or in a 250-degree oven for 60 minutes.

Serve sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.

This will make a serious meal for eight people.

The West End Bar - History of University Student Unrest

While teaching at Columbia I spent time at the West End Bar, a hangout for Columbia students. You could always count on lively discussions. Wikipedia describes the West End Bar as follows:

In the early 1940s, in the formative days of the Beat Generation, students including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Lucien Carr spent hours at the bar discussing their studies and their futures. In the 1960s, the bar was host to student activists upset about racial discrimination in the area and US foreign policy regarding Vietnam. Mark Rudd, who led the Columbia branch of Students for a Democratic Society and was a prominent member of the Weather Underground after his expulsion from the university in 1968, 
spent time at the bar while a student.

After closing for a year and a half, it was bought in 1990 by Katie Gardner, a graduate of Columbia's School of Journalism. She and her family installed a back room for beer pong, a basement area for parties, and a side room for dancing, and the bar became popular, especially among university freshmen. It became notorious, however, for allowing underaged drinkers, with or without ID. However, the bar began to crack down on underage drinking since it was shut down by the police in February 2005.

One Columbia graduate noted:

Yale had its Maury’s, Harvard its Elsie’s … Columbia had The West End. It was the gathering point for me and my friends. It was the place to go after an evening in the library and certainly late on a Saturday night before crashing. It was where much of my College days happened, were planned and emerged, always with a fun tinge, over 15 cent beers.

For me, the “Wet End” was more than just another restaurant/bar. It had character. It was full of conversation — often far from Contemporary Civilization, the course, but very much my contemporary lifestyle. Geoffrey Thompson - Class of 1963.

In addition to the Italian Food of New York, I developed a great love for Hungarian food, particularly at the Green Tree Hungarian Restaurant at 1034 Amsterdam Avenue. Stuffed peppers are still a favorite dish of mine. This little Mom and Pop Restaurant closed in the mid eighties. What a loss - great ethnic food at a reasonable price. A favorite for Columbia students. A June 1982 review of the Green Tree, by the New York Times stated:

A friendly and convivial restaurant offering hot, lusty and well-seasoned four-course dinners with coffee for under $9. Reminiscent of the homey, Bohemian cafe-restaurants of Europe, the GreenTree is a favorite with students from Columbia and Barnard. Diners seated at oilcloth tablecloths are supplied with paper napkins and get familial concern from waiters and owners. Dishes that have held up over time are golden, aromatic chicken soup; cold beet borscht; potato pirogen, filled dumplings fried and topped with cool sour cream; stuffed roast chicken, beef or veal goulash. Beers and wines are moderately priced. 

Alan Hofmeister  - March 18,  2012