How To Eat In
By Adam Byatt
Bantam Press - 2010
ISBN: 059306464X

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How To Eat In

English Pea and Mint Soup

Page 19

Cuisine: English/Scottish | Course Type: Soups and Stews

(1 review)
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Tags: mint peas soup served cold

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16th July 2013

friederike from Berlin,

It tasted very nice, but ... Actually, there were a couple of things that weren't quite right. As it had been sieved, it was a lot thinner that most other pea soups, which gave the impression that it was more elegant. In the end, however, it didn't really taste that different from other pea soups, only the texture was different. But given that it was so thin, you would expect that you'd be able to eat a lot of it. Think again; I didn't even manage to finish my second bowl. It was really quite heavy, and I didn't feel well for hours afterwards. Also, it took quite a while to prepare, and I don't see that extra effort coming back anywhere.

To be honest, I actually thought it was pretty cool to make a stock of pea pods - fresh peas weren't available, so I bought a few fresh broad beans and used their pods for the stock, and frozen peas (no broad beans) for the soup. The stock tasted like green tea with a hint of beans. I'm not sure, though, if it really added a lot of extra flavour.

Minor issues: I don't always expect my dish to look like the one in the picture. It does bug me though if something is obviously wrong. Like the floating blob of sour cream, which sunk like the Titanic in my bowl. No wonder, how should something with such a high density as sour cream not sink in a liquid that is so thin (= low density) as this soup?

And neither of us could taste any mint at all, even though I had used the double amount (two freshly picked sprigs instead of one).

By the way, we served this soup with self-made croutons - the ideal occasion to get rid of a few slices of stale bread. Combined very well.

(edited 20th July 2013) (0) comment (1) useful  

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