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A beautiful light spring or summer soup
Our fantastic Easter Sunday starter was adapted from the Chunky Pea Soup recipe you can find in Soup Glorious Soup by Annie Bell We used extra celery and had no luck in finding the fresh basil or fresh peas the recipe calls for but the result was delicious. We also added a grating of fresh parmesan at the table. The recipe says it serves 4, but we easily got 8 portions from it, we needed more stock than the original suggested too. Maybe the leeks and shallots were bigger than average!
5 tablespoons of light olive oil
5 shallots, peeled and sliced into “half moons”
2 celery hearts, finely sliced
3 sliced garlic cloves
5 leeks, trimmed, sliced into “half moons”
salt and pepper to taste
300g frozen peas
1.5l chicken stock
75g pea shoots, chopped
1 tbsp dried basil
Place the olive oil in a large saucepan or stockpot over a medium heat. Once hot add the shallots, celery and garlic and soften for 5 mins or so. Once softened, add the leeks, and keep stirring for a further 5 minutes until the leeks are soft and starting to go translucent. Add the stock, and the peas, and a little seasoning and the basil, and bring to a simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the chopped pea shoots and give 1 more minute simmering.
Remove half the soup and blitz with a stick blender before returning to the pan with the unblitzed soup. check for seasoning, then serve into bowls with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a generous grating of parmesan.
Enjoy!
