Minted Pea Soup
It is officially Spring! Yeah! I live on the West Coast of Florida and our seasons consist of the hot and humid season, the hotter than hell and so humid you can’t breathe season, hurricane season and those couple of glorious weeks we call Spring. Not too hot, not too humid, just perfect! And Spring makes me think of delicate, tender new foods like lamb, asparagus, morels and peas.
Now I am not a big fan of frozen vegetables with two exceptions, frozen small white onions and frozen peas. And both for the same reason, it is what I call the ETT factor – Effort To Taste factor. The amount of effort it takes to par-boil and peel those tiny onions or to shell enough peas for more than one person is just not worth the difference in taste to me. (Also after nursing a friend through a face lift I discovered the real reason it is so handy to have bags of frozen peas in the freezer, they make the perfect cold compress for your swollen, bruised and sutured face that results from those nips and tucks.)
My ode to Spring is this Minted Pea Soup. It is dead easy to make, takes hardly any time and what can I say? It just tastes like Spring! For my sister and anyone else who can’t eat dairy, just omit the cream and butter. It tastes just as great without it. You don’t even have to adjust the amount of chicken stock.
Minted Pea Soup
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter – use divide
3-4 large shallots – finely chopped
½ cup fresh chopped mint leaves
¼ cup fresh chopped flat leave Italian parsley
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
2 pounds frozen peas (2 large bags)
3 cups gluten free chicken stock
1 cup cream
Heat oil and 1 tablespoon of butter in a large saucepan over medium heat and sauté the shallots until they are soft and translucent, not brown, about 3 minutes. Add the mint, parsley, salt, pepper and the peas (you do not need to thaw) and heat until the peas are thawed.
Put pea mixture and about half the chicken stock in a blender and puree until smooth. You may have to add more chicken stock to get it really smooth and depending on the type of blender, you may have to puree the pea mixture in 2 batches.
Return pea mixture to sauce pan, turn heat to medium-high, add the rest of the chicken stock and the cream and cook until hot, but not boiling. Take soup off heat and stir 1 tablespoon of butter to finish the soup.
Garnish with more fresh cream, sour cream or yogurt if desired. And mint leaves of course!
Serves 4 -6.
