Soup of the week: cheat's pea and ham

I love pea and ham soup, but rarely bother to cook it. The version I tend to make is a time-consuming process: split peas have to be soaked overnight, and either a ham hock boiled for hours, the stock reserved and the meat carved, or I need to have left over boiling liquid from a gammon joint and leftover shreds. And that's before I even cook the peas or make the soup! The result is delicious - salty, thick, comforting, filling - frugal, and absolutely the perfect thing in deep midwinter. But to be honest, I can rarely be bothered to make soup that needs me to plan it out the day before.

So when I saw this Heston Blumenthal for Waitrose recipe, using garden peas, skipping stock and frying bacon with the onion instead, and chucking in bought ham hock at the end, I was tempted.

But then I looked more closely at the method. Um, thawing peas on a baking tray lined with kitchen paper? It gave me visions of peas everywhere but the tray. And as for the mint oil and careful sieving - for a dinner party maybe. Not for a weekday packed lunch.

So below is my heavily modified recipe.

You'll see that we start with the same ingredients, minus the faffing round for mint oil doubled up as ever to make eight portions, although I didn't double the ham hock because I didn't want to pay for two preprepared packs, and I used a 275g pack of bacon, rather than the 320g that would have come from strict doubling, because that was the size of the packet in front of me.

To make 8 portions I used:
Splash olive oil
7 shallots (the amount left in the bag in my drawer)
1.5l veg stock
275g unsmoked bacon
One 180g pack pulled ham hock
1.8kg peas

Rather than carefully defrosting the peas, I just didn't put the bag in the freezer when I got it home from the supermarket!
An hour or so later, I fried up the diced shallots and scissor-cut bacon in a splash of oil to stop things sticking before the bacon gave up its fat.
I then bunged in the stock and brought it to a rolling boil.
Then I added the peas, which were still pretty much frozen, and waited for the mix to come back to the boil, which took a while. Long enough for me to wash up everything else!
I left it boiling for a minute, mostly because it had taken so much effort to get it there I wanted to leave it for a bit.
Then I got out my trusted stick blender, and ta-da!

Yeah, I'm fully aware it looks more like I've pureed Kermit the Frog than a kilo of peas, and that not sieving it has left it distinctly rustic looking. I've made my peace with that.

I then divided up the soup into containers, and popped bits of ham hock on top.

As you'll see, there was still plenty to go round, even without doubling up - in fact, there would have been far too much for my tastes if I had.

The result was completely different from the pea and ham soup I normally make. Fresh tasting, and predominantly sweet, because of the peas and the unsmoked bacon - I think next time I might try smoked to add another flavour it. And although it had much more actual meat in it than the version I usually make, which relies on stock for flavour, it had less of a ham flavour. To be honest, I think it would be nicer - as well healthier - made with a ham stock, rather than by pureeing up all that bacon, all the bacon was a very useful short cut.

But I like the simplicity and the lurid colour that comes from using frozen garden peas rather than yellow split peas, and will try that again next winter.

I say next winter, because I think soup of the week may be about to take a bit of a break. It's getting warmer and sunnier here in Edinburgh. I've got some holiday coming up, which means I won't be needing weekday lunches for a bit. And when I come back, I think it might be times for salads, cous cous, bulgar wheat and other warm weather alternatives. I hope so! I'll blog the ones of these that feel more like recipes and less like desperately thrown-together mixtures. Although I'll share the good ones of those too.