Pea Shoots and Smoked Pancetta Soup

I shamelessly acknowledge that I got the inspiration for this from The Frolicking Foodie. Until I read that post I had never heard of pea shoots, so when I saw them in Marks and Spencer yesterday I had to buy them to make the soup.

I have made a few changes (as you do!), such as using lovely Italian Pancetta instead of bacon and using a chicken stock as I had some, and didn’t have ham stock. I was also a bit concerned that the ham might overwhelm the taste of the pea shoots.

Ingredients

2 Tbsp olive oil
4 shallots, diced
1 medium potato, diced
120g Smoked Italian pancetta***
1 pint chicken stock


Method

Fry the shallots in the oil for about 5 minutes until soft, but not brown.
Add the pancetta and potatoes and continue to fry for another 5 minutes.
Add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes until the potatoes are soft.

Leave to cool a little, add the pea shoots then blend.

As frolicking foodie noted, they do try to fight their way up out of the soup, but I kept pushing them down with the hand blender (known in my family as the "feersum enjin").

Perhaps I should explain the reason for this:

Younger son and daughter in law gave me a hand blender as a housewarming present some years ago. When I was asked what I had been given, on a couple of occasions (obviously suffering from early alzheimers) I said it was an um.... And so it was christened an "Um". Later I had to buy another one, which was rather more powerful, so I christened it the "FeersUM Enjin".

Fans of Iain M Banks will understand the allusion, the rest of you will just have to scratch your heads and say "She's at it again!"

LATER

*** I think that 60g would be enough of the pancetta, and would also be inclined to try unsmoked. I would love to hear how anyone else got on with this recipe.