Sunday 27 September - Finnish Pea and Ham Soup

Spotted this on The Hairy Bikers programme last week, and George said he liked the look of it. I can't often get him to eat either peas, or soup, so thought this was worth a try.

I started by soaking the gammon hock, as I find they can be rather salty.

 

The peas were also soaked, and then boiled for 10 minutes.

The Gammon was then simmered for an hour with some mace, an onion studded with cloves, and a couple of bay leaves.

Then in with the soaked peas, and some chopped onion and carrot and it was cooked for another hour or so until the peas were soft.

The meat was shredded, and the peas and broth blended together ( it took a while to locate the cloves to remove them as the whole onion had broken up during the cooking). As it was blended a big spoonful of English Mustard and a dash of cream were added. I'm not keen on mustard, but this really lifted the flavour of the soup.

This made a delicious thick soup - nothing else really needed for a meal, although we served it with some home made rolls.