The easiest blend-it-all together summery soup
A very short-but-sweet one today - partly because it really is the easiest of recipes and partly because I only have the one photo to show you (and yes, it is posed on the kitchen floor - shhh).
I catered for 14 people the other day - well, when I say 'catered' I mean that I went to Cook and bought three massive lasagnes and then 2.5kg of frozen peas. It turns out (this is a useful FYI to be fair), 14 people do not need, by any stretch, 2.5kg of peas. So I returned home from the lunch with probably about 500g of peas. I can't be exact as they were cooked in my massive Le Creuset and only a fool would attempt to weigh a Le Creuset and I was too busy making pea soup to weigh out the peas sans Le Creuset.
Anyway, point was I had a lot of cooked-from-frozen-but-now-cold peas. And, for those who might have just read the next post down, some rather nice ham. So, I decided that our supper that night could be pea and ham soup (two servings of peas in one day? Mad pea-ple!)
You will need
Some cooked frozen peas - 300g say?
Half an onion, chopped
Knob butter and/or slosh of olive oil
100g or so of roughly chopped good ham
Veggie stock
10 or so mint leaves
Yoghurt to taste
Method
Gently fry the onion in the butter until it is translucent and tender. Don't let it brown. Add in the peas and ham, give it a stir and then add in about a pint of veggie stock. Bring to the boil and let it all simmer for about 5 mins. Roughly chop up the mint leaves and add to the simmering pot and stir, then wield your soup blender in its general direction. You might want to take it off the heat before doing this. Beware - like many blended soups, at this point if you place it back on the heat it will blurp and belch at you like a mud geyser. If it's too thick, add more stock or even a little milk if you like.
Dress with natural yoghurt if you have some in the fridge and serve with lots of cracked black pepper and some crusty bread.
Variations
Feel free to not use the ham, or make it a bit more zingy with chorizo instead (though I can't held responsible for the colour if you blend pea green with chorizo red... soupy brown I suppose?) Also, you could add other veg in too - if you have left over courgettes or celery, or even fennel, I think they'd all blend in well. Have fun experimenting!