Cooking celebrity chef recipes on a rainy day (III)

Supper 9 PM Pea ham Soup by Heston Blumenthal 

I use: 800g frozen green peas – 20g mint leaves – 50 ml groundnut oil – 65g unsalted butter – 75g shallots (sliced)  - 1 clove garlic (chopped) – 160g streaky bacon (cut into strips) – 750 ml vegetable stock – 150g ham hock.  Bowl of iced water

Sieve is not a easy job

Pea and ham soup

1.       Defrost the peas over kitchen paper.

2.       Bring a pan of water to boil and drop the mint leaves for 20 seconds. Remove and submerge in the ice. Remove the mint and dry with kitchen paper.  Put the oil and the mint leaves in a liquidiser and blitz for 15 seconds. Strain the oil through a sieve and reserve apart.

3.       Melt just 25g of the butter in a saucepan at medium low heat; add the shallots, garlic and bacon. Cook for 5 minutes, until soft. Avoid any browning.

4.       Add the stock and simmer for another 5 minutes. Add the peas (reserving 75 g apart) and the rest of the butter and remove from the heat. Liquidise the mixture.

5.       Strain through a sieve to a clean pan, pressing through all the solid you can.

6.       Reheat the soup very gently and season. With a hand-held blender, blitz the soup until foamy.

7.       Serve in soup bowl, sparkling over the ham and some reaming peas. Drizzle the reserved mint oil.

I follow this recipe from the free Waitrose Weekend magazine where Heston is involved. Like you can see, you need to work out a bit in this soup, but what you expect coming from Heston Blumenthal, but at the end is really worth it even is a quite heavy in kcal (almost 600) is very tasty and full of flavour with a sweetness touch. Notice I have changed some of the quantities because some of the Waitrose recipes published are base in quantities that you need to buy always an extra package. For example generally the pea bag are 800g and in the recipe you need to use 907g.

Dessert: Peach Melba by   Jason Atherton

I use: 170g raspberries – 200ml white wine – 1 tbsp sugar – 2 tbsp honey – 1 tsp vanilla extract – 4 halved peaches  (I use canned) – Vanilla ice cream. Flaked almonds and mint to top.

1.       Halve the raspberries and set aside in a bowl

2.       In a sauce pan mix, the wine, sugar, honey, vanilla and 200ml of fresh water. Bring to boil. Stirring time to time. Add the peaches and simmer for 5 minutes. If you are using fresh peaches wait until the peach are tender. When finishes remove the peaches and let to cool. Keep the rest of the liquor in the pan

3.       Spoon 4 tbsp of the liquor from the pan over the raspberries. Mix.

4.       Put 2 peaches halves by plate. Top one half with  ice-cream scoop. Scatter over the raspberries, some flaked almonds and mint and finally pour over some liquor.

For finish a great day cooking like  a professional chef I choose this refreshing  peach melba  desert from the gourmet food book of the also Michelin Star Jason Atherton

11:00 Pm. Still raining

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Cooking celebrity chef recipes on a rainy day (III)