An every day meal for an every day player.
I didn’t know exactly how this series would play out when I started it, but it’s been far wackier than I imagined. Today, we get back to business-as-originally-intended, as we talk about Masataka Yoshida and minestrone: a fine, trusty, workaday soup for a fine, trusty, workaday player.
Yoshida is better than you think, because you think he’s bad, and he’s not. He’s not excellent by any means, but if you had an outfield full of players with OPSes between .750 and .800, you could survive. Can he hit lefties? No. But he hits righties pretty good: .300/.351/.459 over his two-year MLB career. Most pitchers, it should be noted, are righties.
Yes, has defensive issues that are inconvenient for this discussion, but I will hereafter ignore them for the sake of making this comparison work.
The point is that no matter how frustrated with are with Masa, and how we wouldn’t love to see him out there every day, he is, at the plate, fine. You could live with a bunch of him and his clones and have a healthy life. Which brings us back to soup.
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I’ve always been a minestrone fiend. It was the first non-chicken noodle soup I’ve ever loved and not much has changed. High floor, low ceiling stuff. My mom used to serve me Progresso but now I make a recipe I found on Instagram. Specifically, this one, or one like it:
This recipe, and whichever one I alit on a year ago, both cite the longest-living family in history, the members of whom apparently ate this every day. That was enough to rouse me to action in making it, and, just like Masa, I can imagine using it every day even if I’d prefer not to. It certainly doesn’t mean it’s bad. Quite the opposite. To the ingredients!
- Mirepoix (carrots, celery, onion: chop ‘em big and homestyle)
- Olive oil
- Garlic (duh)
- Can of diced tomatoes
- Tomato paste (optional)
- Container of veggie stock
- Large russet potato
- Can of chickpeas
- Can of red beans
- Some sort of noodle/starch (egg noodles, preferably)
- Basil/bay leaves if you can spare em
- Salt/pepper/whatever to taste
Bryan’s Notes
The original recipe calls for barley instead of the noodle/starch, and you’re welcome to use it, but I haven’t bothered.
- Saute the mirepoix in two tablespoons-ish of olive oil for 6-8 minutes on medium eat
- Add crushed garlic and diced potato and cook a couple more minutes
- Add veggie stock, diced tomatoes, chickpeas and red beans, cover, and cook for about an hour on low heat. If you have a bay leaf, you are permitted to add it now
- Shortly before the end, add the starch
- At the very end, add the basil
- Top with parmesan and watch Yoshida be perfectly average, just like the soup