Knob of Butter Confuses Me

Soup is a pretty common occurrence in my home. Every work day my husband gets a thermos along with a sandwich to take to work for his lunch. Soup and sandwich is one of those classic combinations that most can agree are a match made in heaven. It also make my husband a prime target for soup experiments. 

With soup being in high demand in my home it was only natural that my soup cookbook, Soup: Superb Ways With a Classic Dish got used pretty early on in this challenge. Since I am not the person that would be eating the soup everyday for I week, I narrowed  it down to three and let Jon do the picking.

Choice 1- Fresh Pea Soup St. Germain
Choice 2- Squash, Bacon and Swiss Cheese
Choice 3- Cock-a-leeki

All three soups had merit and where devoid of fish paste unlike a large majority of the recipes. The one I was secretly hoping he would pick was the Squash, Bacon and Swiss. I love squash and only vegans and vegetarians dislike bacon. Swiss I was willing to take one for the team for. As much as I like all cheeses, there is something about the nutty flavor of Swiss that makes me wrinkle my nose.  Alas the soup he picked was the pea soup.

I want to like pea soup. I really do, but there is something about it that makes me shudder. I don't know if it is because canned pea soup looks like baby poop, or there is just something about a million peas smashed together that makes me not regret hiding them behind my knees when I was seven to avoid eating them. Texture is everything to me. It was my hope that fresh pea soup would be akin to angels singing in harmony to my taste buds. 

I gathered my ingredients and flipped to page 54 to start the recipe. Thankfully it was a short list and consisted mostly of peas, water, and shallots and a knob of butter. I have no idea what a knob of butter is. I am positive that it is not the size of a door knob in butter that goes in the soup. I took a wild guess and decided that they probably just meant that you whack a chunk off and call it a day.  Or at least that is what I did.  I used some of my Amish butter, and set the peas a simmer. I can only hope that the fine quality lovingly churned butter from the Amish will grant some sort of blessing on the peas and not make it look like baby poop when I am done. 

After everything is cooked, you toss it all in a food processor and blend the smithereens out of it while adding cream to taste.  It comes out a lot like a puree. A bright neon green puree that is reminiscent of a color I use in painting miniatures of mutant zombie blood.  I taste it. It still tastes like peas, but mashed and slightly salty and onion like at the same time.  

There is where following the recipe ends. This is where I should be ending this story. Pea soup was made and successfully executed with minimal destruction of the kitchen and only one incident where the food processor was a jerk and dumped butter pea broth all over the counter because it wasn't locked on properly despite checking it twice. Success right?   Well, the soup was for my husband and I had to make sure he like it. 

Zombie blood = Fresh Pea Soup!

Jon strolled into the kitchen and dipped a finger into the soup and tasted it. The pea soup needed ham according to him. Then he proceeded to dice and dump a fist size amount of ham in the soup. He tasted it again and declared it is perfect and that I should be willing to experiment with the recipe a little bit, because that is half the fun in cooking.  I am tired. I have zombie blood colored pea soup with chunks of pink ham swimming around in it that makes me think of flesh in a container in front of me. Worst of all I have tried it and I still don't like pea soup and no amount of ham magic is going to make me change my mind.  Fresh peas or canned peas it doesn't seem to matter when it comes to soup, it isn't going to be my favorite. I may try this soup again, because Jon liked it and it was easy to make for his lunch. I am hoping that the next time  it will be without the fight with the food processor and maybe with a whole door knob of butter, because everything tastes better with more butter, right?

FYI- 3 out 58 cookbooks have been achieved!