Green Pea Soup

Sunday January 13

This was designed to use up the last frozen nubbins of the Christmas ham. We made the soup on Saturday, along with other long-term tasks like laundry and bread-baking. Thus it was ready to reheat and serve right away on a cold Sunday night with "Masterpiece Theatre" (now wimpily renamed "Masterpiece") in the offing.

1 cup green split peas
water
a hambone if you've got one, or as many ham bits as you have, diced
(separate chewy or gristly bits from nice tender bits)
1 small onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
a half stick celery, diced
1 bay leaf
a few sprigs fresh parsley, chopped
leaves from a few sprigs thyme
salt
black pepper

Give the peas a start by soaking them in water (to cover plus an inch) for an hour or two. Then boil them with the hambone if it's there, or with the gristlier bits of diced ham if it's not, for an hour or so. Keep adding water as necessary; peas are thirsty little devils, and will burn if the water boils off.

When the peas are edible, remove the hambone if any, cutting any clinging ham off it and throwing that back in. Add the diced vegetables and herbs and the rest of the diced ham and boil for an hour more; we like our pea soup thick (Barbara was deeply affected by the Erbsensuppe at Holst am Zoo, a sports-bar in Berlin). At the end, add salt and grind in black pepper to taste. This will give two people a hearty bowl each plus an extra half for seconds.

We served the soup with slices of Holt's fresh-baked Pane Pugliese, made as always on the model given by Carol Field's The Italian Baker. Smeared with butter or just dipped in the soup, it was fantastic.