Why? Because I’m stubborn, that’s why.
(By the way, I married a stubborn man. And together, we produced a child that is one thousand times more stubborn than either of us. It’s like our stubborn genes met, mutated, and created a super strain of stubborn.)
But back to the pig soup.
My first attempt was vomitous. (My bossy spell checker tells me that this is not a word, but it totally is. Not only that, it’s a particularly excellent word.)
For my second attempt, I decided to play it safe, and make split pea soup. Also, I used a left-over bone from a ham, and skipped the whole stock-making step. I think the stock would have been good — even excellent — with this vastly-less-disgusting variety of pig bone, but I’m still scarred from my last go-round.
Peas Porridge HotFor some reason, split pea soup gets a bad rap, probably because of its vile color. But I love it, especially on a chilly night.
Here’s my recipe, which, like most of the things I cook, started as someone else’s recipe, before I tinkered around with it:
Split Pea Soup
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 cup carrots, chopped
1 left-over ham bone
2 teaspoons dried leaf marjoram
10 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 lb. dried split green peas
Melt the butter in a Dutch oven. Add the vegetables, and cook at medium heat until they soften, stirring occasionally. Toss in the ham bone, and let it cook for another few minutes. Add the marjoram, broth and peas. Simmer the soup, partially covered, for an hour. (Or for as long as you want. I left it bubbling away for two-and-a-half hours. The whole point is to create ham-infused pea mush, after all.)
Remove the bone from the soup, and let it cool slightly. Remove the soup from the heat, and give it a few blasts with an immersion blender. Pick any remaining ham off the bone, dice it up and add it back to the soup. Stir and serve.
Voilà! It is done and it is delicious. Just try to ignore the color.
