Cook it Fresh

My husband is quite adventurous when it comes to food, both eating and cooking foods that I won’t even consider.  He is a wonderful tester for new dishes because he’ll taste just about anything.  However, he does have one culinary aversion:  Peas.  His mother is certain this aversion is due to the  vast quantities of pureed peas she fed him as a baby, but whatever the reason, he just doesn’t like peas.  I try to accommodate his one food pickiness by avoiding dishes that are heavy on peas or substituting another ingredient, but this has precluded me from trying my hand at split pea soup, something I have wanted to make for some time.  Then, last week, I stumbled upon a recipe for Split Pea Soup with Winter Vegetables in the cookbook Celebrate! by Sheila Lukins.  This was a soup that used split peas more as a backdrop for a medley of root vegetables and ham, instead of having peas as the main flavor.  I decided to make my own version of this soup, substituting smoked bacon for the ham and changing several other ingredients.  The result was a very rich, thick, nutritious Fall soup.  The sweetness that the root vegetables lend to the broth is enriched by the smoky bacon and even my husband agreed that it was a wonderful, filling Autumn soup.  Please try it out and let me know if you agree!

Harvest Pea Soup

Although the bacon adds a distinct, smoky richness to this soup, I think this recipe would be almost as good as a vegetarian soup.  Just use 2 Tablespoons of olive oil in place of the bacon fat for cooking the vegetables and substitute vegetable broth for the chicken broth.

Serves 8

Ingredients:

5 slices of thick, smoky bacon

1 medium onion, diced

3 leeks, cleaned and diced

2 carrots, peeled and diced

1 rutabaga, peeled and diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 cup green split peas

8 cups homemade chicken broth or 2 boxes store bought broth

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/2 Tablespoon kosher salt

3 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced

1/3 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped

1.  In a dutch oven, fry the bacon until browned and crisp.  Remove bacon to paper towels to drain and then crumble it up.  Pour out all but 2 Tablespoons of the bacon fat from the dutch oven.

2.  Put the onion, leeks, carrots, rutabaga and garlic in the dutch oven  with the remaining bacon grease and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the vegetables have softened, 10 to 15 minutes.

3.  Pour the split peas in with the vegetable mixture and cook, stirring constantly for 2 minutes.  Add the crumbled bacon, 6 cups of the broth, the thyme, black pepper and salt to the dutch oven and bring to a boil over high heat.  Reduce the heat to low and cook covered for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the peas have softened.  Add more broth as needed to keep the soup from being too thick.

4.  Stir in the tomatoes  and cook for 5 more minutes or until the soup is heated through. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.  Serve hot, topping each bowl with a sprinkling of fresh parsley.

Vegetables for the soup: Tomatoes, onion, carrots, rutabaga, leeks, and split peas

On a final note, we ate this soup with some hot, crusty rustic bread and slices of Dill Havarti, one of my favorite cheeses.  It’s a wonderful cheese to serve with soups as it doesn’t have a super strong flavor, but the dill adds a little bit of tanginess, delicious!