The greens of spring are just right for soup

As a cook, I roar into spring with arms and mouth open wide. My meals are a study in green, efforts to shoehorn as many different vegetables as possible into a single-serving vessel. Many dishes from my kitchen have featured in this quest, but just one has filtered through as a standby in the season's weekly rotation: minestrone.

Early versions might include green garlic and leeks, sweet white turnips and carrots, radish and turnip greens, asparagus and parsley. Later, I might swap in bulb spring onions for the leeks and garlic scapes for the green garlic; replace the radish and turnip greens with all but the tenderest inner leaves of a head of escarole; and add coins of early zucchini, and as many fava beans as I feel like peeling. As tomatoes come in, I might add two or three, so ripe they're easy to peel with a paring knife, and, later, flat pole beans.

If that sounds out of step with what minestrone typically summons to mind, consider that in Italian, the word can simply mean "big soup."

"This is because regardless of where it is made, there are multiple vegetables used, as opposed to using just one main vegetable, as is the case in many soups," says Micol Negrin, founder of Rustico Cooking, a culinary school in New York. "A starch is always incorporated, and it may be short pasta such as tubetti or short-grain rice or potatoes to thicken it up. Zuppe, on the other hand, are thickened with bread."

In Italy, minestrone varies by season and region: In the northern region of Lombardy, Negrin says, minestrone might include pasta and winter squash; farther south, in Tuscany, cannellini beans and cabbage or kale; in the coastal city of Genoa in the northwestern region of Liguria, it would be finished with pesto.

Beans, believe it or not, are not always used. But as a vegetarian cook, I am ever on the lookout for ways to harness ingredients that create a depth and richness of texture and flavor - those we tend to associate with dishes we deem satisfying.

Beans and pasta together accomplish that beautifully. In the accompanying recipe, dried cannellini or limas or mayocobas are soaked, then cooked slowly, producing a full-bodied broth that functions as the soup base. The pasta cooks directly in that broth, releasing its own sweet, nutty-tasting starch and thickening the soup. Together, they create a backbone of body and earthy, buttery flavor that brings the herbal, grassy profile of the vegetables into balance and lends a measure of fullness that verges on hearty.

For a springtime minestrone, I favor a white or yellow bean for its golden cooking liquid. The precise variety is less important, although starchier varieties, such as limas and the large Greek beans called gigantes, tend to create a richer broth.

The olive oil you cook your minestrone with should be extra-virgin and good-tasting. In the company of such clear, straightforward flavors, the character of the oil will make a prominent statement, for better or for worse. Further, don't be tempted to whittle down the amount too much: "It's not just the flavor of the oil that's important. Fat also carries flavor; it helps bring out the taste of everything else," says Sara Jenkins, author of Virgin Territory: Exploring the World of Olive Oil (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015).

The arc of your soup, though, is your selection of vegetables, best determined by the stage of the season. Let your soup reflect what's in your fridge - which may be whatever bunches you have uncommitted to the rest of the week's cooking. The only firm rule is that you use an assortment.

For the initial sauté of the alliums and other aromatics, my own preference is for a light touch and minimal browning early in the season - the better to frame the sweet, grassy clarity of new growth. As the harvest takes on a certain heft, I'll brown the aromatics correspondingly. The broth from cooking the beans goes in next, and the pasta after that, to cook directly in the pot. The remaining vegetables are added in succession, the order and timing of addition dependent on how colorful and tender you want them to be.

When the minestrone is ready, the pasta will be barely tender, whatever leaves you've added to the soup silky and green, and the broth creamy with starch.

Stir in any final flourishes, such as slivered scapes or green onion tops; let the soup rest for a minute or two, then ladle into bowls. Garnish moderately: with black pepper, more olive oil, a little grated cheese. Serve with good, crusty bread, for sopping up the broth in your bowl.

Relish this one. Chances are it won't be the same next time.