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Chilled pea soup with crab salsa
Serves 4 Starters and mains
Ingredients
- 21⁄2tbsp olive oil
- 4 sticks celery, finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped and crushed to a paste with 1⁄4tsp salt
- 3 large banana shallots, chopped
- 1kg peas in pods
- 10g flat-leaf parsley, leaves removed (reserve the stalks)
- small handful wild garlic leaves, if available
For the crab salsa
- 4 spring onions, thinly sliced diagonally
- 100g white crab meat
- pinch cayenne, plus extra to garnish
- juice 1⁄2 lime
For the crostini
- 1 small ciabatta, thinly sliced
- 1⁄2 lime
- extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle
Method
Heat 2tbsp of the oil in a medium saucepan. Add the celery, garlic paste and shallots and sweat for about 5 minutes until just soft but not coloured.
Shell the peas and wash the pods. Put half the pods and the parsley stalks in a pan with 1 litre water. Bring to the boil for 8 minutes. Put a colander over the pan of celery and shallot mixture, then pour in the pods to strain the liquid. Boil for 10 minutes.
Add the peas, wild garlic and parsley leaves and simmer for 1 minute. Tip into a bowl and sit the bowl in a larger bowl of cold water, with ice if you have it: this cools the soup down quickly so the peas don’t loose their bright colour. When the soup is cold, blend to a purée, add salt to taste and chill until needed.
Meanwhile, for the crab salsa, heat the rest of the oil and wilt most of the spring onions for a minute. Tip into a bowl and leave to get cold. For the crostini, rub the ciabatta with the lime and toast both sides. drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle on a little sea salt.
If you don’t want to make stock from the pea pods, use bought vegetable or chicken stock. Timings for the peas are based on using very fresh young peas; allow a little longer if they are older.
Fold the crab meat into the wilted spring onions and season with salt, the cayenne and just a squeeze of lime juice. Ladle the soup into serving bowls and top with the crab mixture. Sprinkle over a little cayenne and reserved spring onion. Serve with crostini.
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