Soup & Bread at the Hideout--4/10/13

A few of us are doing another Soup night tomorrow and Martha just posted that she needs one more soup maker. If interested, let me know. The theme is Spring Forward--I'm making Slutty Spring Pea with Garlic Cream and Bacon. We serve starting at 5:30. Need to make 3-4 gallons I'd soup. All proceeds go to a food-based charitable organization.

And we'd LOVE to see a lot of LTH support so come out and eat!!!

I'm giving this a bump. It's a chilly, rainy spring day, perfect for some homemade soup and good company. Best of all support a good cause.

I can't make it but I'm dying to know what a "slutty spring pea" is

The theme was "Spring Forward"--since I'm not very adept at molecular gastronomy, doing anything "futuristic" was out--so I came up with another definition of "forward" I tried to make the recipe very sexy, over the top, brazen, etc. Ok, a significant amount of license is being taken here but you should all come out and try it and see for yourself!

Haven't made the soup yet so there's a pretty strong likelihood that this will change along the way but at the starting point, it's an adaptation of a Daniel Boulud recipe (and this is for 3-4 gallons of soup so obviously you'd adjust the portion size if making a normal amount):

Slutty Spring Pea Soup

40 slices of bacon
5 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
20 celery ribs, thinly sliced
½ cup minced ginger
20 shallots, thinly sliced
10 leek, white and tender green parts only, thinly sliced
50 cups (400 oz) chicken stock or low-sodium broth
Twenty 4-inch rosemary sprigs
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
3 pounds sugar snap peas, thinly sliced
2 pounds snow peas
2 pounds of pea shoots
Twenty 10-ounce boxes frozen baby peas
2.5 cups flat-leaf parsley leaves
32 oz low fat greek yogurt
5 cups (40 oz) heavy cream
Salt
10 garlic cloves, minced

1. In a large soup pot, cook the bacon until browned and crisp. Transfer the bacon to a plate. Pour off all but about 5 tbsp of the bacon fat.
2. Heat olive oil with the bacon fat. Add the celery, shallots, ginger and leeks and cook over medium-low heat until softened but not browned. Add the chicken stock, 1/2 the cooked bacon, 10 rosemary sprigs, salt and white pepper. Simmer until the vegetables are very tender. Remove the bacon and discard the rosemary. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the vegetables to a bowl.
3. Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Add the sugar snaps and snow peas and cook for 3 minutes. Add the peas, 1lb of pea shoots and the parsley and cook just until heated through, about 1 minute; drain. In batches, add equal amounts of the pea mixture and the veg mixture to the blender and puree until smooth, adding spoonfuls of broth as needed to loosen the mixture. Transfer back to the pot and simmer. Repeat until all veg and pea mixture is blended smooth. After all puree transferred to the pot with the stock, add all but a cup of the yogurt.
4. In a saucepan, bring the heavy cream, remaining yogurt, garlic and remaining 10 rosemary sprigs to a boil. Simmer over low heat until slightly reduced, about 5 minutes. Season with salt to taste. Strain the garlic cream into a bowl and let cool. Crumble the remaining slices of bacon.
5. Ladle the warm pea soup into bowls and drizzle with the garlic cream. Garnish each bowl with crumbled bacon and a pea shoot and serve.