Pea and ham soup

Pea and ham soup in a green bowl

I thought soup weather was over but I was wrong - yesterday was rainy, windy and cold. Good thing I bought a ham hock at the weekend to make soup.

Ham hock sounds a lot posher than pork knuckle, but it's the same thing. In Poland it's called 'golonka', which is what we used to call my (half Polish) nephew when he was a baby.

I searched for soup recipes online and found ones that cooked vegetables with the ham hock for an hour, then pulled the meat off the hock to serve. Yuk! Vegetables that have been cooked for an hour!

Instead, I made a stock by cooking the veg and the ham then strained it. Amazingly, I got exactly 2 litres, so for once I can be accurate about the recipe quantities. However I forget to weigh the split peas before I soaked them, but it doesn't really matter how much you use -- it will just affect how thick you soup is. If it turns out too runny, add some red lentils to thicken, as they don't need to be pre-soaked, and only take about 15 minutes to cook. (The grated carrot will also thicken the soup slightly)

Ham hock stock 

• 1 ham hock/pork knuckle
• 2 small or 1 large carro
• 2 medium onions
• 2 sticks celery
• 8 peppercorns
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 large sprig thyme (optional)

1. Chop the vegetables roughly and add to a stock pot or large pan with the ham hock.
2. Cover with cold water.
3. Bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour.
4. Leave everything in the pan till cool, then remove the ham hock and set to one side.
5. Strain the liquor into a jug, and discard the soggy, overcooked vegetables.

Pea and ham soup ingredients

• 2 medium onions
• 2 sticks celery
• 1 small carrot
• Rapeseed or olive oil for frying
• 2 litres ham hock stock
• Meat pulled off 1 ham hock
• 300g yellow split peas
• 150g frozen peas

 How to make pea and ham soup

1. Soak the split peas in a large bowl of cold water overnight.
2. The next day, rinse well with cold water and leave to drain in a sieve over the bowl. 
3. Heat a little rapeseed oil in a large pan.
4. Finely chop 2 medium onions and 2 sticks celery.
5. Fry onions and celery in the oil until soft.
6. Grate the carrot and add to the pan.
7. Pour in the stock.
8. Add the split peas.
9. Season with pepper and bring to the boil.
10. Reduce to a simmer and continue cooking until the split peas are mushy.*
11. Check the seasoning.
12. Turn off the heat.
13. Add the frozen peas - they will cook in the residual heat from the soup.
14. Leave the soup to cool a little.
15. Liquidise in batches.
16. To serve, heat up only as much soup as you need, adding some of the ham pulled from the hock to warm through.

*The time taken for the split peas to become mushy will depend on how old they are -- if they have been sitting in the back of your cupboard for ages they could take a long time to go soft. 

Soup - lunch for free

I almost always make and take my lunch to work, so when I don’t I’m shocked at the price that people pay for a salad or a bowl of soup. That’s why I consider lunch made at home to be ‘free’. If you tried it for a week you could save yourself £25.

The inspiration for starting this blog came after a veggie single mum friend asked me for some meat and fish recipes to cook for her daughter. Although I rarely get home before 7, the odd fish finger sandwich aside, I always have a homemade meal. So I thought I would share my ideas, tips and shortcuts for creating quick, tasty and inexpensive meals.

My friends think I am a great cook but I am not – I’m just capable of following instructions. Admittedly I sometimes ignore those instructions and make things up myself.

The recipes will be written in easy to follow steps and include explanations where I think they are needed. I will unashamedly rely heavily on recipes developed by others, adapting them as I see fit.

The contents of my freezer, my friend

Today I took an inventory of my freezer and was ashamed at how disgusting the top drawer was.

There are strict rules about what goes in the middle and bottom drawers of my freezer but the top drawer is full of items such as half-melted ice cream, pine nuts, coffee beans and random objects that have since lost their identifiable purpose.

Throwing out the crap and cleaning the drawer was strangely satisfying and put me in the mood for making soup.

Split pea soup

I love soup. It is the perfect delicious nutritious solution to clearing out your vegetable rack and making free lunch.

However my soups do have a tendency to end up all the same. I need to expand my soup repertoire and introduce different ingredients.

My standard soups are generally based on some combination of the following vegetables:

Basic soup vegetables

• Onion
• Carrot
• Leek
• Celery

The vegetables are gently sweated until soft in a little oil.

Olive oil does not need to be extra virgin for cooking, though my mum always uses extra virgin which she buys from Lidl. I have recently started using rapeseed oil, which is produced in the UK. It has an earthy, apply taste – if Somerset was a taste, it would be rapeseed oil.

Then I add either:

Liquid for soup

• Stock, vegetable or chicken, or
• Water with Parmesan rind (thank you, Nigel Slater). I store these in my friend the freezer.

and add one of the following to thicken:

Thickening agents for soup

• Lentils
• Chickpeas
• Split peas
• Pearl barley

Potatoes can also be used, but I tend to reserve this exclusively for leek and potato soup which is possibly the easiest and most satisfying soup to make of all. My brother showed me how to make leek and potato soup after he was taught at primary school.

I add spices and herbs depending on what other ingredients I use. Here are some guides

• Coriander goes well with carrot or parsnip
• Cumin goes well with chickpeas
• Chilli goes well with pumpkin and squash
• Thyme goes well with mushrooms

Today I used the following:

Split pea soup ingredients 

• 1 large onion
• 2 sticks of past its best celery
• 2 carrots
• Stock made from boiling a gammon joint in water with a sliced onion, carrot and celery stick, bay leaf, peppercorns and rosemary sprig
• Split peas, rinsed and soaked overnight in cold water, drained, and rinsed again in cold water. This means you need to plan ahead the day before you want to make the soup but it takes no effort at all. Dried split peas are very cheap and make a good thickening agent. They are a good source of roughage.

How to make split pea soup

1. Fry the onion in a large pan while you chop the celery into small pieces.
2. Add the celery to the pan and sweat – this means you cover the pan with a lid while the vegetables cook slowly in the oil till soft.
3. Grate the carrot then add that to the pan, cooking till soft.
4. Add the stock and the split peas.
5. Season with pepper only. Don’t add salt – the peas will be tough and you will fart.
6. Bring to the boil.
7. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes
8. Reduce the heat and simmer till the peas are cooked.
   This could take 30 minutes or longer, depending on how long the peas have been in your cupboard.
9.  When the peas are cooked, turn off the heat. 
10. Leave to cool.
11. Liquidize in a blender or use a hand-held blender to puree.
    I like to leave some texture in the soup but make it however you like.

Notes on split pea soup

I suspect that my split pea soup is too salty because I had to cook the split peas for so long in gammon stock, thus concentrating the salinity of the stock.

O says the soup looks like sick. It does. I pureed the soup in response to this comment and it now looks like pureed sick. However it is yummy tasty and will provide me with five free lunches at work.