Salmon Broth Minestrone With Eggless Farfalle

There's no actual pieces of salmon in this soup, but the backbone of this dish relies on flavorful fish broth that requires hours of simmering time. Made as a part of my week of $20 budget meals, after picking all the meat off, I simmered about 2 cups of salmon bones in a medium pot of boiling water with a large pinch of salt for about 3 or 4 hours until the liquid turned a rich, milky hue. I made some eggless bowtie pasta with just ground durum wheat berries, salt, and water and cooked it up in this fish bone broth with whatever veggies I still had hanging around: canned tomatoes, carrot, jicama, jalapeño, onion. 

If you don't have any of the spices I list below and can't access them, don't worry—none of them will make or break the deal. I can't stress this enough: Use what you have! It will be good enough. 

Make no mistake: This was a struggle meal. It's basically odds and ends that I managed to clobber together into a bowl, and then made Aaron eat it. He then told a very surprised me that it reminded him of childhood canned soups, but better. Which just goes to show, just because it's a struggle meal doesn't mean it can't be good. It all depends on whether you win the struggle or not on any given day. 

I used durum wheat beerries that I ground into a flour in my high-powered blender for this recipe because that's all I had on hand to use that week. I'm sure it'll be fine if you use all-purpose flour—just adjust with more flour or water as you see fit, until the dough feels moist and pliable but not at all sticky. Or, you know, just use prepackaged pasta! Boil it for a couple minutes longer. It's all good.