My pea and ham soup recipe

I'm not really a food blogger, but I was asked about this recipe by a friend of mine - so here it is for all to enjoy.

One New Year, I was craving pea and ham soup but had to make some adjustments to how I normally would make it in order to get all the ingredients I needed in Japan.

I bought most of these ingredients from Hanamasa, but they should be easy enough to find in any supermarket.

• 2 500g bags of frozen peans.
• 1 medium sized onion
• 1 stick of celery
• 4 (or however much you want) cloves of garlic
• 1 small carrot or half a big one
• 2 packs of bacon lardon / bits for soup making
• A bunch of butter
• Some good quality cooked ham
• A pack of Knorr pork stock / broth cubes
• Water
• Salt and Pepper (White preferably, black is OK, both is also OK - do you)
• 1 wee carton of heavy cream (45% or more).

• Chopping board and knife for chopping with
• A big pot suitable for making the soup in
• An immersion blender or something else that you can blitz the soup with

First, do the annoying prep first. You want to dice the onion, carrot and celery to roughly the same size. At this time maybe also peel and mince your garlic too, so you have it on hand.

In the pot you're going to cook the soup in, put in a good lump of butter. I didn't really measure it, but it was around a tablespoon.

Turn on the heat to medium-low, and let the butter melt and start to get foamy.

Add in the bacon lardons and cook them until they start crisping up and releasing their delicious pork fat into the butter. It's OK if it takes a while.

Once they are cooked, remove them from the pan, and add:

1. The carrots, and give them a stir
2. The celery and give it a stir
3. The onion
4. Once the onions are a little translucent, add in your garlic, and stir
5. I added some salt and pepper here too

Once this delicious soup base is done, add in a little of the water and make sure to get all the tasty brown fond from the bottom of the pan.

You can put the cooked bacon back in at this point too.

Then add in your peas, making sure you leave enough room to cover them with water. You might not need both bags of peas depending on the size of your pan.

Cover everything with water, and drop in stock cubes based on the instructions on the packet relative the amount of water you added.

Bring it up to a simmer. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes or so.

Remove from the heat, and use your immersion blender to blitz everything together until it is at your desired consistency.

Once that's done, taste it for seasoning. It might not need any more salt, but I usually give it a bit more pepper at this point.

Return it to the heat and stir in some cream to add richness.

With your already nicely cooked ham, either shred it, tear it, or cut it, and mix it through the soup.

And that's it! Delicious pea and ham soup.