Pea Soup

Soup and fish explain half the emotions of human life."                                                                       -Sydney Smith

I don't know if this quote goes well with fish but I cannot disagree that soup does explain one's  emotions. We love soup as a family maybe it's because of our laziness to chew veggies or the fact that we camouflage a lot of our veggies in the form of soup. These are exactly my hubby's reason for having  soup. So soup day at home is when we bring out our about to rot veggies or pulses buried under our meticulously sorted cupboard. This was how I ended up with pea soup.Pea soup always reminded me the tale of Princess and the pea. It also reminded me of the story of stone soup where a guy ends up with a stones at a doorstep asking for wood to cook his stone soup. The curious lady asked him how anyone could make a soup out of stone and this guy pretended to boil stone in water and kept borrowing ingredients from the lady, eventually to have made the stone soup . This was a lesson I learned in 3rd grade and maybe it stayed etched in my mind because of my passion for food and cooking. So soup for me is a nostalgic experience and so I do believe soup can explain half the emotions of human life. As a kid mom always made soups in winter. Back in Kerala we had no winters except the monsoons. Now in Bangalore, we do have a decent enough winter time to bring out our pots and pans to spoil the broth :) . Pea soup was an accidental experiment. I grabbed a pack of split peas thinking it to be whole pea and then when I did realise it was split pea, split pea soup came to my mind and so we had split pea soup. My hubby says it resembles our green peas curry except for the fact it had no Indian spices to give it that sharp flavour. Nevertheless I enjoyed a soup after a long time.Hope you will love this too.

Ingredients for Pea soup ( Recipe adapted from Simply recipes)

Split peas- 200 gm
Carrots- 2 medium size, diced
Potatoes- 2 medium size, diced
Onion- 1 diced
Celery- 1 stalk
Garlic- 1 clove
All spice leaf- 1
Salt- 2 tsp
Pepper- 1 tsp
Oregano- 1 tsp
Sweet basil- 1 tsp
Butter- 25 gm



Directions

Wash and clean the peas. Pressure cook it for 2 whistles along with the vegetables, garlic,celery, all spice leaf and onion. The recipe I adapted from suggested cooking the pea on low fire for 1 1/2 hr but then I wanted to save some LPG and I decided to pressure cook. Besides the peas were to be pureed thereafter so I thought I could be pardoned for this act. The recipe included a herb bouquet and ham hock. I skipped the ham hock because I wanted it to be purely vegetarian and instead of herb bouquet I add the all spice leaf. Once the pea mix cools down puree them using a blender. If you want a smooth puree pass it through a sieve I did this.Transfer this puree to a pot and let it simmer while you add salt, pepper a dash of oregano and sweet basil. I mixed basil and oregano in warm butter and poured it over.

We had this with my version of garlic bread. It's very simple. Take some butter and heat it  for 25 seconds in your microwave. Add some oregano, basil and garlic powder ( a very important ingredient) and mix well to have flavoured melted butter. 

Spread this mix to our bread sliced and  grill our bread for 5-8 minutes in our oven. It tasted awesome and I also tried variations with chilli flakes and cheese.