Five-fingered pinch of mint leaves, plus some torn leaves for finishing
Two 340g packages Birds Eye frozen baby peas
Extra virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
3 or 4 tablespoons crème fraîche
Make the broth: Combine the hocks, vegetables, bay leaf, peppercorns, and 2 litres water in a medium stockpot and bring to the boil over high heat. Turn the heat to low, put the lid on, and cook at a nice steady simmer until the meat on the hocks is so tender it’s almost falling off the bone, 4 to 5 hours.
Carefully remove the hocks and put them in a big bowl. Strain the cooking liquid through a sieve into the bowl, and discard the vegetables and aromatics. Let the hocks cool in the liquid.
When the hocks are cool enough to handle, pull off the meat in bite-sized chunks. Discard the bones and any hard bits and some of the fat, but don’t throw away the skin –I add the skin to the soup in thin slices, along with the chunks of ham. You don’t have to, but I like the way it goes sticky in the soup. You can keep the stock and meat (moistened with a splash of stock) in separate airtight containers in the fridge for up to two days. Gently warm the meat and skin before proceeding with the recipe. This recipe requires only 1 litre of stock – you may freeze the leftover stock for up to a month for your next batch of soup.
Make the soup: Put the butter in a large pot that has a lid and set it over medium heat. Once the butter starts to froth, add the onion, carrot, and salt and stir. Cover the pot and cook, stirring every now and again, until the onions are soft and creamy (but not coloured) and the carrots are tender but firm, about 15 minutes.
Add the wine and bring it to the boil (turn the heat up if you need to). Let the wine boil until it’s all but gone, about 5 minutes. Add the mint and 1 litre of the ham broth and bring the liquid to the boil, then add the peas. (At this point, the carrots will have bobbed to the top. I like to pick out most of the carrot chunks before puréeing the soup, then add them back after. That way, you can nibble on them in the soup, getting that bit of texture.) Cook at a simmer until the peas are warmed through and tender, about 5 minutes.
Blend the pot’s contents, in batches, until smooth. Return all the bright-green pea purée to the large pot, add the ham pieces and carrots, and cook at a very gentle simmer for about 5 minutes, just to let the flavours mingle and heat the ham. Have a taste, and season with salt. How much you need to add will depend on how salty the ham hocks are.
Add a generous drizzle of olive oil, several twists of black pepper, and the torn mint leaves. Then add the crème fraîche in little blobs here and there, so everyone will get a bit. Serve the soup in the pot, with small bowls alongside.
IT ISN’T EASY BEING GREEN
I love to let the ingredients in this soup mingle in the pot for a few hours so the flavours marry. Doing this, however, sacrifices the soup’s lovely bright green colour for a pondy, murky one. I don’t mind the colour change, but some people might. If you’d like to make the soup the night before and want it to stay bright, set up a big bowl of ice water and set another big bowl inside. Once the soup is done, pour it into the bowl and stir until it’s cold.
MARKET SOUP
This is soup of a moment – of the first warm days of summer. It takes advantage of the first of the season’s Jerusalem artichokes, and it is a lovely way to use the pretty young onions and garlic piled up on the tables at the farmers’ market. These three vegetables, along with carrots, form the base of the soup. You cook the vegetables just until their sweetness begins to show itself but not so much that it will obscure the other goodies you plunk in as the soup cooks. I use baby artichokes, asparagus, and ramps, but you can use any seasonal veg you’d like. Perhaps you’ll decide on sweet peas instead of artichokes, or broccoli rabe instead of ramps.
serves 4
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 pinkie-thin young spring garlic stalks, roots and all but 2.5cm of the green stalk trimmed, very thinly sliced
About a dozen bulbous spring onions (or a dozen small shallots), trimmed of stalks and leaves and cut into small wedges