Spicy and refreshing minted pea and chilli soup

I made this as a bit of an experiment, I love peas with mint and chilli so thought I would try and combine them into a lovely spring/summer soup ready for my fresh pea harvest.

Serves: 2
Cooking Time:  10mins

Ingredients:

• 250g frozen peas (or fresh if you have them)
• 300ml chicken or vegetable stock
• 1 Onion finely diced
• Either a handful of fresh mint or a tablespoon of dried mint
• 1 dry red chilli (crumbled) or 1 1/2 teaspoons of chilli flakes
• 1 clove of garlic, crushed.
• Big knob of butter
• Salt and pepper
• 1/4 block of feta cheese, crumbled

Method:

1. Fry the onions and garlic in a the butter until soft and translucent, try not to colour them.
2. Add the mint and the chilli and fry for 30 seconds
3. Add the Peas and fry for a couple of minutes before adding the stock.
4. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5minutes
5. Add the mixture to a blender, whizz until smooth, season with salt and pepper.
6. Serve with the feta crumbled over the top.
7. Enjoy

You can also use the recipe, minus the stock and feta to make a great side dish for with meat, fish or chicken. Just fry the peas until cooked then crush lightly with a fork.

This works best if you have some leftover chicken from Sunday lunch but you can use any kind of leftover or fresh chicken. Quantities are kind of to your own liking but if I have a cold, I really ramp up the ginger and chili!

Step 1

From leftovers:

Deflesh what remains of your chicken and put to one side, quarter the remaining carcass and boil for around an hour to make a stock. Remove the carcass and strain stock through a sieve.

From fresh:

Take a couple of chicken breasts and slice into inch thick strips, add them to a pan and poach gently until cooked (about 10 or so mins)

Step 2

Finely slice a thumb sized piece of ginger and two hot chillies, add them to a hot pan with some vegetable oil and gently fry, add some thinly sliced spring onions and garlic and fry gently for a few more minutes. Add your chicken and a couple of pints of (either cube or proper) chicken stock, add a good slug of soy sauce. Boil for about 20 mins on a low heat.

Three or four mins before serving add a couple of nests of dried medium egg noodles and continue boiling until they cook.

Just before serving thinly slice some pak choi and add along with some beansprouts.

In the meantime her is the recipe, it sounds awesome and as if it would just as happily suit a posh dinner party as being taken out into the hills in your flask, if you make it please leave some feedback!

Ingredients:

• 2tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 medium red chilli
• 700g parsnips peeled and chopped
• 1 lime, zest only
• 1.3 litres vegetable stock
• 150ml double cream

Method

1. . Heat the oil in a pan, then cook the onion and whole chilli for 5mins until softened.Add the parsnips and lime zest. Stir well and cook for 2mins.
2. Add the vegetable stock, bring to the boil, then simmer for 20-25mins. Remove chilli from the soup. split in half and remove the seeds and stalk.
3. Liquidise the soup in a blender with the chilli until smooth.
4. Return soup to clean pan, add 150ml cream, stir well, season to taste, then gently heat through.
5. Alternatively, miss out step 4 and add a large spoonful of creme fraiche to each bowl when serving.

If you want to add a bit of extra smokiness to the soup you might want to char-grill or oven roast your peppers first instead of frying them .

All the peppers, chillis and onions were home grown so it works out really cheap.

Ingredients

• Chorizo – about half a sausage – or as much/little as you like
• 2 or 3 red peppers (more if you are using the sweet pointy ones)
• 400ml Vegetable or chicken stock
• 2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
• 2 Hot Chillis or some chilli flakes
• 1 Red Onion (or 3 smaller ones)
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes with herbs
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• Salt and pepper
• Chilli flakes

Method

1. Chop the chorizo into small pieces
2. Chop the onion, peppers and chilli’s keeping a few bits of pepper for decoration.
3. Dry fry the chorizo – you don’t need to add oil as the chorizo is oily enough, remove the chorizo from the pan and place on some kitchen paper
4. Fry the onion, peppers and the chilli in the chroizo oil until soft then add the garlic and paprika and tomatoes, cook for 5-10 mins.
5. Add 2/3 of the stock
6. Simmer for 15 minutes.
7. Taste and season
8. Now you depending on how you like your soup you can either liquidise it all or liquidise half of it, either way liquidise until you have your favoured consistency (adding more stock if necessary)
9. Add the chorizo back to the soup.
10. Garnish with a couple of pieces of pepper and a sprinkling of chilli flakes, Serve with homemade bread.