🇭🇷 Croatia · Istria
ManeštraIstrian vegetable soup
The thick soup of Istria, cooked from seasonal vegetables or grains (sweet corn, barley, chickpeas, fennel, cabbage, beans), usually with potatoes and dried bacon or other cured pork, garlic, parsley and olive oil.
Origin and history
Maneštra is the everyday thick soup of Istria, the peninsula shared by Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. Istrian tourism sources describe it as potatoes, beans, cured meat and seasonal vegetables, and list many forms named after the main vegetable or grain. Great British Chefs notes that the name echoes minestrone.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 1 h 45 min
- Hands-on
- 35 min
Ingredients
- 300 g1 2/3 cups dried white or borlotti beans, soaked overnight and drained
- 500 g1.1 lb potatoes, peeled, cut in chunks
- 150 g5 oz dried bacon or pancetta (slanina), half diced, half chopped fine with the garlic and parsley; a prosciutto bone or smoked pork rib can replace part of it
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- 1 carrot, diced
- 1 stalk celery, diced, with a few leaves
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped with the bacon and parsley
- 1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped with the bacon and garlic
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 tbsp olive oil, plus a little to finish
- 1 tbsp plain flour, for the browned flour (prežgana)
- 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
- 2.5 l2 1/2 quarts water
- salt and black pepper, to taste
- crusty bread, to serve
Method
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1. Put the drained beans, the bay leaf, the prosciutto bone or rib if using, and the water in a large pot. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, partly covered, for 45 minutes.
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2. On a board, chop half the bacon together with the garlic and parsley until it forms a rough paste.
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3. Warm the olive oil in a small pan, soften the onion for 5 minutes, then add the chopped bacon mixture and the diced bacon and cook until the fat turns translucent.
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4. Stir in the tomato paste and paprika, then scrape the whole mixture into the bean pot.
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5. Add the potatoes, carrot and celery and simmer for another 30 minutes, until the beans are creamy and the potatoes break when pressed.
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6. Brown the flour in a dry pan or a little oil for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring, until light golden. Whisk in 1 ladle of hot broth to make a smooth slurry and stir it into the pot.
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7. Crush a few spoonfuls of the beans and potatoes against the side of the pot to thicken the soup, simmer 10 minutes more, then take out the bone and bay leaf and pull off any meat.
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8. Season with salt and pepper, ladle into bowls, add a thread of olive oil and serve with crusty bread.
Notes
- Maneštra is not one recipe but a family: the Istrian tourist board lists sweet corn, ground corn, chickpea, barley, fennel, fresh cabbage and minestrone forms, and the Fažana board adds broad bean and vegetable versions. This page's recipe is the bean-and-potato form with dried bacon, tomato paste and browned flour (the first of the Fažana board's versions). The sweet corn form has its own variant page.
- Quantities follow the Fažana version in proportion, scaled to a home pot: it lists 1 kg of beans, about 500 g of dried meat or bacon and 500 g of potatoes for six, which is a very large batch, so here the beans are 300 g (as in the Great British Chefs and Chasing the Donkey recipes), the bacon about half that weight and the potatoes 500 g. The Fažana list names only 1 clove of garlic, an onion, a carrot, a tomato-paste spoonful, parsley, celery, bay, ground red pepper and 1 to 2 tbsp of browned flour.
- The cured pork varies by source: dried bacon or dried meat (Fažana), smoked ribs with a prosciutto bone (Chasing the Donkey, Great British Chefs). Without any pork, use more olive oil and a pinch of smoked paprika.
- Some Istrian cooks finish with a spoonful of vinegar (Great British Chefs, Chasing the Donkey), and add small pasta or corn; both are left out here.
- A maneštra made with pickled cabbage is called jota in Istria (the tourist board stresses it is not 'maneštra from jota') and has its own soup page.
- Soak the beans overnight; if short on time use canned beans and shorten the first simmer to 15 minutes. The soup thickens as it stands, so loosen it with hot water when reheating; it keeps 3 days in the fridge.
Adapted from Istrian Tourist Board (Istra.hr): Istarska maneštra, Fažana Tourist Board (Info Fažana): maneštra recipes (bean version, scaled down), Great British Chefs: Maneštra od bobići (method for beans, ribs and ham bone), and Chasing the Donkey: Istarska maneštra.
Variants
At the festivals
No festival we list has printed it on a menu yet.