Pea and mint soup

We had a truly delicious pea and mint soup at The Swan in Stoford on New Year's Day. I had, as it happens, been considering making a pea soup once we got back home, but had been thinking along the lines of ham stock and split peas. The pea and mint soup was so delicious that I decided to give it a go instead.

So not ham stock - would certainly overpower the mint. I made a chicken and vegetable stock (chicken carcass from Sunday, parsnip, carrot, leek, a bit of cabbage I happened to have lying about) and then took the last of the garden peas from the summer out of the freezer, together with some of the mint I had frozen in the early autumn. I simmered these in the stock until the peas were very tender (much more tender than I would have cooked them if I had been planning to serve them on a plate) and then put it all in the blender in little batches so that some, but not all of the peas were mooshed up.

My soup is lighter and less thick than the one at Stoford, but is almost as delicious. I think that theirs is a proper winter soup and mine is probably more of a summer soup. But I shall continue to drink it until it is all gone, even though it is snowy and cold and very definitely not summer!

I made a chicken hotpot with the left over chicken pieces from Sunday. Shredded the meat and put it, some mushrooms, some left over red cabbage and the left over gravy from Sunday in my new baking dish that Father Christmas brought me (Father Christmas brought me LOTS of lovely kitchen things, including a very fancy fat separating jug, and a splendid griddle which stretches across two hotplates on the stove, and a toast and marmalade jug and a Japanese cook book, but lots of other things too), and mixed it all together. Then I covered it all with thinly sliced potato which I dotted with butter. I baked it in a moderate oven until the potatoes were crisp and the hotpot was bubbling. We had it with sprouts, carrots and gravy. Exciting what you can do with a few left overs!!