Green King

With the season for certain fresh vegetables drawing quickly to a close I recently took some time out to make a mint and green pea soup while fresh peas were still in season.

As I began the rather dull task of shelling nearly one pound of garden peas I put on the CD player Led Zeppelin's fifth album Houses of the Holy; a record which brilliantly combines hard rock brutality with shimmering ambient passages.

After  the peas were prepared and washed I cut up into fine pieces two white onions and then sliced up three medium sized potatoes. I next poured some cooking oil into a high sided pan and lightly fried the potatoes and onions with a teaspoon of black pepper for ten minutes stirring them occasionally to avoid them sticking to the pan.

I then took four small sprigs of fresh mint from the garden and added them to pan together with a tablespoon of dried mint, a pint of chicken stock and the fresh peas. I stirred these items into the potatoes, onions and pepper and left them to stew on a low light on the hob for forty-five minutes.

After forty-five minutes I turned the hob off and left the pan and its contents to cool for an hour. I then blended the contents of the pan and returned it to the pan. Some recipes for soup of this type suggest mixing cream into the soup at this stage but I prefer to use plain pro-biotic yogurt as it lends flavour to the soup without making it unnecessarily rich.

The results were well worth the earlier tedium of shelling all the peas as the fresh mint, peas and yogurt gave the soup a refreshing taste which helped me to cool down after experiencing a large dose of very humid weather earlier in the day. If you get the chance to before fresh peas go out of season I certainly recommend making this soup.

The finished soup; a luxury that can only be enjoyed at its best when fresh  peas are in season