If you are
looking for a soup that can be cooked quickly, this Pea & Potato Soup with Bacon is not for you. This is
a 2 day process!
The day before
Cook your
ham hock in the slow cooker by covering it with water and added a bunch of
other aromatics to the water – in this case I used:
Star anise
Coriander
seeds
Knob of
frozen ginger
2 sticks of
frozen lemongrass
2 dried red
chillies
2 bay
leaves
8 or so
cloves
Some chilli
oil
Some garlic
oil
A cut up
carrot
A cut up
parsnip
Spring
onions
I cooked
this on low for about 10 hours at which stage the meat was falling off the
bone.
Take the
meat out and put on a plate. Strain the
liquid and keep the clear stock to form the base of your soup.
Throw out
the bones and skin of the ham hock and shred the meat and keep it in the fridge
for your soup.
To make the soup
Take your
stock from the day before and add 2-3 potatoes cubed to it and simmer until the
potatoes are just about tender. Add a
good quantity of frozen peas and cook for another 5 minutes.
At this
stage my intention was to blitz the mixture smooth with a stick blender – but guess
what, it made a funny noise and didn't work.
So Plan B was using a potato masher which was only partially successful.
Put the
soup back on the stove and add some cream or crème fraiche and the ham hock pieces. Taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper
as required.
Serve with
a garnish of a few drops of chilli oil (mine was home made and eye-watering)
and a swirl of cream.
A
confession – in the real world the pieces of ham hock will sink to the bottom
and not show at all in the photo – so I put a mason jar lid in the bottom of
the plate so it held them up. Apologies
for the tricky!
Oooooh what a clever photography trick! This sounds so comforting and warming. Potatoes and bacon are such a natural match. Bummer on the stick blender.
ReplyDeleteThe stock sounds delicious (along with the peas, potatoes, and ham)! I'll have to try this - cool weekend here in Virginia, USA - 70F high during the day.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea to get the ham to show up! I like the idea of the chili oil to jazz up the soup, too.
ReplyDeleteOh boy does that sound good, and I love your ingenuity!
ReplyDeleteThis does sound really worth the time, even though I'm more in the mood for cold soups with this weather we're having.
ReplyDeleteLaughing at your photography trick, but the soup sounds like it's worth the two day process!
ReplyDeleteToofunny bout that Mason jar lid. Hey, whatever it takes to get a good photo! Love the looks of this soup. I know it's cold where you are, horrificly hot here, but we still eat soup. Year round!
ReplyDelete