Pea & Parsley Soup with Bacon

This Pea & Parsley Soup with Bacon was somewhat more refined than my Slow Cooker Pea & Bacon Soup.  This was thanks to seeing James Martin doing it on his show Home Comforts.

The first thing you need to do is to cook your ham hock – because I used the slow cooker I did it a day ahead – but you could use a stock pot on the stove and have it done in 3 hours or so.

For the ham hock:

Put one ham hock into your slow cooker along with an onion (quartered), some garlic infused olive oil (or some garlic), a carrot (thickly sliced), a couple of stalks of celery (thickly sliced), 3 sprigs of parsley, a sprig of thyme (I used ½ tsp of dried), 6-10 whole black peppercorns and a bay leaf.  Cover all that lot with water and cook on low until the ham hock is meltingly tender.

Take the ham hock out and when it is cool enough to handle take off the skin and any bones and then shred the meat (not too fine) and put aside for the soup.

Strain the liquid and discard all the bits.  This might seem a waste but the taste in them will have almost entirely gone into the broth.  It is this strained ham broth that you will use for the base of the soup.  I had quite a lot of it so froze quite a lot of it for later.

For the soup:

25g butter

750m Ham hock liquid (strained)

Equal quantities in volume terms of frozen peas and fresh parsley (approx 400g of each)

Cream – a small bottle – keep some for the garnish

So you melt your butter and then add the ham hock liquid, the peas and parsley and then your cream.  Bring it up to almost a boil and then blend it.

Heat it up again (without boiling it – that's the only tricky bit).

Serve it into a bowl with some of the shredded ham hock on top (but it won't float!) and drizzle with olive oil and cream.  I do advise you to get the ham up to at least warm so that it doesn't chill off the soup too much.

This was truly delicious and I'll be making it again – or something using a similar technique.