
Initial impressions of the raw ingredients were that the celery stick delivered four days previous was looking rather limp! In fact compared to the supermarket purchased celery which had been in the fridge a day longer it was the worse for wear. Luckily it was going to be softened further in the soup so not a problem for this recipe. The mince also looked a little fattier than the extra lean I usually buy but it would probably need a bit of extra fat to hold the meatballs together anyway.
Making the base of the soup with the celery, carrot and garlic was simple. I then added a tin of high quality tinned tomatoes (which did taste pretty special when i opened the tin) and a stock pot and voila! Making the polpetti was also reasonably straight forward and they held together perfectly when browned in the frying pan. All that was left was to pop in the pasta and heat the foccacia bread. To serve I sprinkled over the remaining cheese and garnished with chopped parsley. Unlike Husband i found this pretty intuitive but I am used to making soups so not too far out of my comfort zone with this one! 40 minutes pretty accurate timing.