Pea & ham soup

A classic warming soup which is dead easy and dirt cheap, perfect.

Makes 1 litre

Ingredients
1 ham hock (fat, bone and everything left on) soaked in water over night
Bag of split green peas
2 onions sliced
Stock veg (onion, 2 carrots, 2 celery sticks)
2 bay leaf


Drain the water from the hock and refresh. Put on to boil with 2 litres of water. Chop and add the stock veg, bay leaf and a good hit of black pepper (don't add salt yet as a lot will come from the ham.) Let it cook for over an hour until the ham is finished and the water reduced by 500ml.

Take the ham out and leave to cool. Discard the stock veg as they will have done their job. In a seperate pan, fry the 2 onions until they start to brown, then add the stock and the bag of split peas. While this is cooking, trim the fat from the hock. With the meat underneath, cut long, thin slices until you get to the bone. Add the fat and bone back to the soup. Cook this for another hour until the water has reduced another 500ml and the peas are starting to break up. Remove the fat and bone ( a lot of the meat will have come off them) and blend the rest. The peas will thicken the soup and give it a nice green colour. Now check for salt and seasoning. If you want you can add some of the ham back to the soup (chopped up), but there should be a strong meat flavour without this.