Ham and Pea Soup

Yesterday, in celebration of this beautiful season of Spring starting, i made garishly bright iced sugar biscuits, but today all i can think about is soup.  It is cloudy and raining, raining, raining.  It feels like the middle of July, not the beginning of October!  So, to warm the cockles of my heart... well, my stomach really... the prior is the responsibility of my husband, and my cat... i made pea and ham soup, or ham and pea soup.  Being of the rather carnivorous variety of homo sapiens, we like our meat, so when i make a soup like this, it is HAM and pea soup!

It is a super easy recipe, but not really one for making on a whim as one needs to soak the peas for six hours before getting the soup cooking.

French Onion Soup

Yum yum yum and sooo easy.  Just takes some time though.  This recipe is from the Food & Home Entertaining Magazine, May 2011.

Image courtesy of BBC Good Food

French Onion Soup
Serves 6
80 ml butter
6 onions, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 fresh bay leaves
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
500 ml water
250 ml dry sherry  (can be substituted with brandy)
45 ml cake flour
1.5 litres chicken stock (beef stock is great too,just yields a richer soup)
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste


Melt the butter in a large pot over low heat.  Add the onions, garlic, bay leaves and thyme.  Cook over low heat, stirring occasionally until the onions are soft and caramelised, about 2-3 hours.
Add the water and scrape any bits off the bottom of the pot.  Simmer until the water has evaporated, about 20 minutes. {I wanted to retain as much flavour as possible, so I left the lid on the pot while the onions were caramelising.  In this way, i didn't loose as much liquid as i might have, had i left the lid off and therefore, I thought it unnecessary to do this step.}
Stir in the sherry and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the harsh alcohol in the sherry has evaporated and the onions are dry, once again, about 20 minutes.
Discard the thyme and bay leaves.  Stir in the flour.  Add the stock and season to taste.  Continue cooking for a further 30 minutes.

Image courtesy of  Donna Hay

To serve:  Slice some French loaf, and top with slices of Gruyère or Parmesan.  Pop in the oven under the grill for a few minutes.  Place on top of the dished soup with a sprinkle of fresh thyme!


In my search for some pretty pics to add to the blog, i came across Donna Hay's French onion soup recipe.  She adds a bit of mustard to the soup. Sounds like a fabulous idea. I am definitely going to give that a try the next time that i make this soup!

Winshaw Weekly Experiments (Chicken Curry Soup)

In my search for inspirational people to follow on twitter yesterday morning, i came across @SimplyDelishSA.  Her recipe for the day, yesterday, was a fragrant chicken curry soup with naan bread.  Being the cold, wet, Wint'ry day it was yesterday, i thought that this recipe would be just the thing for dinner!  A lovely, easy recipe to follow with very tasty results!
http://simply-delicious.co.za/2011/05/23/chicken-curry-soup/
This is the ideal week night dinner recipe to make as it only took the Winshaw team 30 minutes to prep (while feeding dogs and washing dishes)!  I might add more carrots the next time that i make this soup to increase the veg:meat ratio!  Also, we didn't have any tinned tomato in the cupboard (shock-horror!), so we used fresh tomatoes instead, which, to my mind, worked just fine!I didn't start in advance enough to let the naan bread dough rest as long as is required, but it still worked well.  The naan bread is the ideal match for this heart-and-soul-warming soup!