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.
This just sounds so good!!!
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