What did you eat this weekend?

Apparently, all I ate was a bowl of appetizer soup…

Pea soup

Pea soup and a blob of wrong ingredient

I didn’t know it was filed under appetizers! I ate it with good appetite, though, and a slice of bread.

Here are the ingredients:

  • 0.7 litres of water (about 3 cups (US))
  • Something to make vegetable stock out of that scant 3 cups of water. The original recipe calls for 1 portion of vegetable Fond “du Chef” from Knorr — I used that since we have those in the store but I’m sure anything to season the water would work. The product itself suggests using one portion for 0.5 dl liquid so this needed to be slightly more diluted than usual.
  • 600 grams of frozen peas (I bet fresh would do, but you’d have to cook for less time I think)
  • 2.5 decilitre of Crème fraiche (garlic and herb flavour)
  • 1-2 teaspoons wasabi paste

Boil water and the vegetable stock ingredient of your choice. Add peas and cook for 5-8 minutes until soft. Purée with a stick mixer.
Mix in fraiche and wasabi paste. Bring to boil and you’re done! If you’re feeling fancy, you could add croutons. I had some bread instead.

Actually, I didn’t use fraiche since I didn’t know what I was looking for. I looked for the stuff (“Creme Bonjour Cuisine”) in the cheese section because I’ve used their cream cheese in cooking before. And since I didn’t find the “Cuisine” part nor the “garlic and herb” part, I picked up a package of plain garlic cream cheese. I didn’t realise I was supposed to look in the cream/milk section… Anyway, I’m sure there are puréed soup recipes with cream cheese, so I don’t think it was such a bad mistake. (Once again I reminded myself to check the unknown ingredients before heading for the store. I could live without another spinach macaroni casserole fiasco.) It didn’t ruin the soup and I’m happy with that.

Next time — which there will be, I’m sure — I’ll use the correct ingredient. And probably add a bit more wasabi. Don’t know if the cream cheese made it milder but 2 teaspoons wasn’t strong enough in my opinion. Fresh peas are so sweet.

(The original recipe, in Finnish. There’s a comment, “this can’t be good.” I personally think it was…)