Soups on

When I read Lindy‘s post about Thrice-wise June Pea Soup, I knew that I had to try it. I love split pea soups, particularly those of the sludgy, solid-when-cold variety, but I find those soups too heavy for summer. Deborah Madison augments green split peas with sugar snap peas and English peas for a lighter, fresher soup; the recipe Lindy posted is her adaptation of Madison’s.

Sugar snaps are in abundance at Seattle farmers markets now, and of course one can find frozen English peas year round. I made three small changes to Lindy’s recipe: I omitted the smoked paprika (I had none), and the salt (Paul can’t have it), and added a small red pepper for a touch of heat.

While this soup is nice cold, as I had it for lunch yesterday, I find its flavor and texture more pleasing when it’s hot. And those little rounds of raw sugar snap that I added for the photo shoot turned out to be a lovely, crunchy-juicy-sweet contrast to the soup.

Since I was going to stand at the stove stirring one pot of soup, why not make another at the same time? I needed to use the 2 1/2 pounds of farmers market tomato “seconds” that I’d roasted earlier in the week. I was working without a recipe, tossing in whatever I had on hand that I thought would complement the tomatoes, rendered remarkably sweet by their time in the oven.

I chopped up one small spring onion, a large shallot, two small yellow peppers, and the rest of the fennel bulb from the pea soup, and cooked the vegetables all together in a little olive oil until nicely browned. I added the roasted tomatoes and three cloves of garlic, and simmered for fifteen minutes. The immersion blender turned the mixture into a lumpy puree (and our white-tiled backsplash into a scene from a horror movie); a trip through a fine sieve rendered the puree velvety smooth. I added a cup of chicken stock, and simmered a little longer. A good glug of half-and-half, a pinch of cloves, and hmmm… it needed something to brighten the flavors. As it often will, a spritz of lemon juice did the trick.

My husband is not a fan of tomato soups, so I took it as high praise when, having obediently sampled the spoonful I held in front of his face, he said, “Yeah, I’d eat that.” He paused, then added, “But you’ll probably enjoy it more that I would.” Ah, well, more for me… and enjoy it I have.