My husband, Joe, hates peas. My sister, Sarah, hates peas. She even won a school contest when we were little for a poem she wrote about how much she dislikes peas. So I don’t cook a lot of peas.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way – let me recommend this soup with peas! I promise, you won’t even notice them. Instead, you’ll reap their health benefits while savoring the parmesan and vegetable flavors that command this dish.
There are a million ways to make chicken noodle soup. With or without chicken. With or without noodles. Adding heat with sriracha or your other favorite hot sauce. Adding cheese. Using a range of vegetables and other additions. The list goes on and on. So here’s one that has an ingredient that’s a difficult sell in my house – peas. I got the original recipe from a Food Network Magazine article from last year and adjusted to my tastes. Don’t worry, Joe got on board once he had a bite of this dish.
Ingredients:
- 1 tbsp EVOO
- 2 stalks, Celery
- 2 Carrots
- 2 Shallots
- 2 cloves Garlic
- 1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
- 1 tsp Dried Thyme
- 1 piece of Parmesan Rind (see substitution, below)
- 4 cups Chicken Stock (see substitution, below)
- 1 1/3 cups Pastina
- 1 cup Frozen Peas, thawed
- 1 Lemon
- Parmesan, for topping
Here’s what I did:
First, do all the prep. Wash the celery stalks and discard the white bottoms, peel the carrots. Finely chop the celery, carrots, shallots and garlic.
In a soup pot, heat about 1 tbsp olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the celery, carrots, shallots and garlic, stirring often, until softened (about 5-6 minutes).
Add the thyme, salt and parmesan rind. Then add 4 cups of chicken stock and 1 cup of Bring to a simmer.
Add the pastina, return the pot to a simmer and cook until pasta is al dente, about 10 minutes.
Remove the parmesan rind. Stir in the peas, along with the zest and juice of half a lemon. Ladle into bowls and top with grated parmesan.
A few notes, FYI:
What is pastina? It’s just little pasta! You’ll see in the grocery aisle, there are lots of miniature versions of your favorite pasta shapes – that’s pastina.
If you want to make this totally vegetarian, use all water instead of chicken stock. Add a little extra salt.
Parmesan rind is the hard edge of the block of cheese. If you’ve already discarded it or plan to use pre-shredded parmesan at the end of the recipe, you can instead just add 1/8 cup of shredded parmesan when the rind is supposed to go in the pot.
