Green pea soup

I've been doing something like this for some time, but a friend asked me for recipes using thyme, and thyme works well here.  I started off doing this with left over veggie, but now I buy stuff specifically to make it.

Ingredients

These are terribly fluid; the method works with almost any vegetables.  I think that this particular mix of vegetables works quite well.  This will probably make 3 - 4 servings (depending on how much liquid you use).

• A 500g bag of fresh peas
• Asparagus (yes, I know.  It's not a waste of asparagus to put it in a soup, though!)
• One onion or
• One leek or both
• About 100g of smoked bacon (or half a pack)
• Olive oil 
• Chicken stock - I use the stockpots and make up to 500 mL; you could use one stock cube if you like
• A few sprigs of fresh thyme (see picture underneath)

You do need a stick blender for this (although I expect you could tip the soup into an ordinary blender).

The peas need to be podded.  This is what 500g of podded peas looks like:

And here's how much thyme to use:

You need to strip the thyme leaves from the thyme stems, but don't worry if a few soft stems are included - it all gets whizzed up at the end, anyway.

Method

• Cut the bacon rashers into 1 cm strips and put them in a cold saucepan, turning the heat on under them. 

 I do this on an electric stove that heats up slowly, so I turn it to high.  If you're using gas, I think you'd probably need to do it on a lower heat - say, medium to low.  You want the fat to come out of the bacon bits.

• When the fat has come out of the bacon bits, add a glug or two of olive oil, and add the chopped onion and / or leek. Saute until soft, stirring all the time. 

 I usually use both! I was thinking last time that it would be perfectly OK just to use the leek, though, if you have a large one.  This is sauteeing, not frying - you're just softening the alliums, and driving a bit of water off to concentrate the flavour.  It won't hurt, though, if the onions pick up brown specks.

• Add 500 mL of chicken stock and the thyme leaves, and let the mixture simmer for five minutes or so. 

• Add the chopped asparagus and peas and let the mixture simmer for another five to ten minutes.

You might want to add some more water or stock at this stage - I usually add 300 - 500 mL of water.  You need to taste if you're thinking about adding more stock, because there is a real danger of making the soup too salty.  The bacon and the chicken stock already used make it quite salty - if you're using homemade stock, though (made in the old fashioned way by boiling up the left over roast chicken carcass from Sunday), it might not be salty enough, and you'll need to add some extra salt.

You'll get something that looks like this:

It's quite thick with vegetables. 

• Use a stick blender to puree everything in the pan.  Everything.

What you will see is something that looks like this:

And that's your soup.  When I made it so that I could take pictures, I'd forgotten to get bread, so I served it with some grated hard goats cheese:

But I think it's probably best with a roll and butter.  It's even better the next day, kept in the fridge overnight and reheated.  It also freezes quite well.

Variation

I haven't done this because it seems like too much faff, but if I had the tuits, I'd take the bacon out after having fried it and before adding the onions, or some of the bacon anyway, and add the bacon bits back in at the end after pureeing the vegetables.