pea soup

I've been making soup lately as the days grow colder and one of our favourites is pea and ham. I always use this recipe from Alice Hart's book Friends at my table.

1 smoked ham hock
1 large onion
2 celery sticks, roughly chopped
bouquet garni of 2 bay leaves, 2 sprigs of thyme and 2 sprigs of rosemary
300g green or yellow split peas
400g fresh or frozen green peas

Soak the ham hock one to four hours in plenty of cold water to remove excess salt, then rinse, before cooking.
Put everything (apart from the fresh or frozen peas) in a large, lidded saucepan with 1.6 litres of water and bring to the boil.
Reduce the heat to low and leave to cook gently, lid on, for an hour and a half. Add the fresh or frozen peas and cook for a further five minutes.
Turn the heat off and remove the bouquet garni, then carefully fish out the ham hock, dropping it into a bowl. Allow the hock to cool a little before shredding or chopping the meat quite finely, removing and discarding the skin, fat and bone as you go. Set aside.
Puree the soup in the pan with a stick blender, or pour into an upright blender in two batches. I don’t puree this thoroughly, so the soup retains some texture, but blitz until smooth if you prefer.
Return the soup to the heat, along with the ham. Taste and add salt if needed and a little black pepper.
Let down with water if the soup seems too thick to you, the consistency is supposed to be hearty though, not thin. Serves 8.

As you can see the recipe says to make a bouquet garni. Usually I'd just throw the herbs into the pot and then spend ages trying to remove the bay leaves etc once the soup is cooked. It's easier if you've made a little posy of the herbs and tied them all together with thread or string. But the simplest method of all is to put the herbs into a little drawstring muslin bag. Most kitchen shops sell these but I made my own bigger version to hold plenty of fresh herbs. Instructions coming.

I hope you try the soup. I'm sure it would also make a nice vegan version. Minus the ham, of course.

jam

A little bit of something to brighten up a winter's day - biscuits made from this Yotam Ottolenghi recipe published online in The Guardian. I made the recipe as given but substituted limes for the orange and lemon (as I didn't have any) and I used spelt instead of regular flour. You press your thumb into the uncooked biscuit to make a little hollow that you fill with a spoonful of warmed jam when the biscuits come out of the oven. They were delicious. Such a lovely treat.

And here's a little tribute to Rik Mayall - clever English comedian and writer and star of the hilariously funny television series The young ones - who died last week.

Reading: Far from the tree by Andrew Solomon - insightful book about raising children who are different and their parents whose lives were changed forever. I'd like to give this book to everyone I know.

spots

The cookies are Lemon and Rosemary - same as I made last year using the martha goes green recipe published in extra curricular magazine. If you can't get hold of extra curricular issue 11, I see that martha goes green has published a book of their recipes. Hopefully, the cookies are in there so that you can enjoy them too. They are irresistibly good.

And I've been sewing spotty napkins - with mitred corners! And admiring spotty shrubs (Oleander) at Omaha.

but not so far

Yesterday was Auckland Anniversary Day and a public holiday where I live. So, in my quest for more holidays this year, we spent the day with friends on beautiful Waiheke Island. We walked the sculpture trail, tasted a little local wine, bought local produce - olive oil, honey, lemons and plums - and swam in the sea. Hoorah to that!

The minty drink is nimbu pani made from lemons I bought up North last week and some sugar and salt. It's an Indian summer drink similar to lemonade. Some of my work colleagues just love it so I had to try it for myself. I made this recipe from Sailu's Kitchen. It did taste a little bit electrolyte-sports-drink but I think the lemonade lemons I used are sweeter than regular lemons. Apparently they can be eaten straight off the tree like an orange so probably not a good choice for nimbu pani. We drank it all, but next time I might try limes or, perhaps, Waiheke lemons.

rhubarb and strawberries

 

The rhubarb and strawberries "appeared" on my kitchen bench yesterday - harvested by my husband from his garden. I'd wanted to try rhubarb and strawberries together so this was obviously the time to do it. And, weirdly, I'd been reading about rhubarb and ginger crumble over at tiny happy. So I made a crumble with them using this recipe from the BBC Good Food website. It was delicious! I substituted lemon zest for orange and left out the pine nuts because we didn't have any. And we ate ours with Greek yoghurt. So good.

The flowers are peonies. Sadly, it's not cold enough to grow them here in Auckland so these are not from my garden. They must be one of my favourite flowers. They remind me of those over-the-top still life paintings of vases crammed with flowers and set against dark backgrounds like these ones.

Reading All made up by Janice Galloway + Listening to Claimed by the sea by French for rabbits + Watching Homeland season 2