Pea soup

This pea soup is fast, delicious, nutritious and is made with minimal effort and prep. We all have days when we just don’t feel like cooking, but still want something healthy, tasty and good value with household staples.

I’ve used frozen fine peas here. If you happen to have fresh ones, podding them is a fun chore for the kids. If you’d like to check out some more pea recipes, you can find them here. You can also add a leek along with the onion to the soup to enrich it with more vegetables. If you don’t have a potato, a handful of split peas will help the soup thicken. Broth also helps with this. I almost always use homemade bone broth. In addition the taste, it helps add “body” to all sauces and stews.

I usually serve this soup with some good quality ham. What I always have in the freezer is artisan bacon with no preservatives and additives from here. Sometimes I use leftover Easter (or Christmas) ham, or traditional Greek “apaki” ham from Crete. You just slice it and pass it through the pan for a couple of minutes.

You can also serve this soup cold. In that case, you can add a couple of tablespoonfuls of chopped mint when blending the soup, then chill it for at least 2 hours in the fridge.

Recipe

• 1 tbsp ghee or preferred cooking oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cups cauliflower or 1 potato, roughly chopped
• 1 liter homemade bone broth
• 500 gr. petit pois peas, frozen or fresh and podded
• To serve: 250 g of any cold cuts you prefer and a little yogurt, or coconut milk (canned)

Place a medium saucepan over medium heat and melt the butter. Sauté the onion until soft, without changing colour. Turn up the heat and add the potato, broth and peas. Cover and bring to the boil. Then lower the heat again and let it simmer for about 15 minutes or until the vegetables soften. In the meantime, prepare the ham, sautéing it, finely sliced in a frying pan. Once the soup is done, liquidize in batches in the blender or straight in the pot using a hand blender. Serve with the ham in the middle of the dish and a couple of tablespoons of cream around it.