Pea and Ham Soup ……. Indian Style
Rummaging through my freezer, trying to clear some space I found a ham hock that I’d bought and thought what a perfect Sunday lunch.
The hock was ridiculously cheap, less than £2, and its a great cut to slow cook in water. So I assembled some stock ingredients and some pulses that if added make up a soup.
I put the hock in a large saucepan with carrots, shallots, celery, pepper corns, bay leaves and parsley and slowly simmered it for three hours.
Half way through I added the split peas and yellow peas. After three hours the ham was cooked to the fall of the bone stage and the peas had cooked and broken down too. I then pulled out the hock, put it to one side to cool and fished out and discarded the stock vegetables ( they have done their job imparting flavour by this stage and aren’t great to eat) . If you want standard pea and ham soup you can stop here. Season and liquidise the soup and add chunks of the ham.
However I fancied something a bit different so I added some Indian spices. I gently fried a chopped onion and then added some ground roast spices, mustard seeds, coriander, cumin, Chilli and garam masala.
When this was cooked, and you’ll know the smell is amazing, I added it to the soup and liquidised. I then added some ham hock to my soup plate, sprinkled with roast cumin and chilli and finished with fresh coriander.
The soup was really substantial and easily made a main meal. The pot had yielded about six portions, which is now filling the free space left by the hock In the freezer. This freezer emptying exercise is very hard!
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Rowanwood Kitchen 