Kermit the Soup

There was a certain delicious irony in Contrary Towers this evening, I was making a soup of the purest green whilst my flatmate was watching an arts programme about gold, with a mention of the alchemists, on her pooter. Why? Think Blackadder the Second. Obvs.

Anyway. A few weeks back we found this ace recipe for pea and pesto soup with fish finger croutons. At the time though we couldn't make it as we were missing a key ingredient. Namely peas. And pesto. And fish fingers. And spud. In short we had stock and we had water. And a pan.

Even I can't make a really decent knife-stands-up-in-it soup with that.

Post-party we had stuff. I hadn't realised that, importantly, we had pesto. And I'd got spud for turning the other party chicken in to soup. Sooo...

You'll need...

• 500grammes of frozen peas. We had just enough *adds to shopping list*
• About the same again in spud, 4 medium sized ones should do it
• Half a jar of green pesto. Which, oddly enough was exactly how much we had
• A veggy stock cube made in to about 3/4 of a litre of stock
• A dash of cayenne pepper as it's a legal requirement
• Ground pepper
• Quarter of a teaspoon of cumin
• 10 fish fingers. 8 to use as croutons, 2 to, err, test.

Give peas a chance...

Chuck the peas in the wrong sized pan, the soup pan is in the fridge with chicken soup in it. Peel and dice the spud so the bits are about pea sized. Add the stock. Bring to the boil. Add the cayenne, ground pepper and cumin. Then simmer for about 20 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, put the fish fingers under the grill after first arguing about whether grill or oven is best. You want them crispy so grill. This also means you need to remove the now concrete like dried pitta bread from the grill, tear and throw to the ducks whilst laughing at ditzy flatmate. The ducks liked this. Fortunately I managed not to burn them, hurrah. The fish fingers not the ducks. Though at one point some cheeky mare did ask whether they were ready because she could smell burning. Some people!

I think I turned them once. I wasn't really concentrating as the whole gold programme thing was fascinating.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

When the pea and spud seem about ready, take out about a third of the pea and spud with a slotted spoon then blend what's in the pan. This will end up a disgusting smooth gloop that even the hungriest babies would turn their noses up at. But it is tasty. Add the pesto, blend a bit more.

Finally add the peas and spud you took out earlier and give it all a bit of a stir.

The fish fingers should now be about done. And not burned. Cut them roughly in to threes. Eat some, offer some to your flatmate, which she'll accept and then tell her it's time to eat...

Note the gap... Ask Clare why!

When she's got off the chair, ladle out the soup and add the fish fingers in an artistic manner. At this point she may lose all signs of resistance and eat another piece of fish finger...

Sit down.

Eat.

It doesn't get much easier than that and, I have to say, it was really, really scrummy.

As we ate, Clare offered a thought. We were, essentially, eating fish, chips and mushy peas. Just rearranged. And more peas than usual.

Now that has to be a win.