While the recipe could easily be made with pesto from a jar, Nigella Lawson prefers using fresh ingredients, saying the difference in taste is “astonishing”.
“I think soup tastes better made in a blender [typically having one blade and rather tall] rather than a food processor [which usually has more blades and is wider],” she added.
“And it’s best to use a blender which has a central plug in the lid that you can remove to stop the pressure building up which, in turn, prevents you from getting soup all over you or your walls.”
Fan Odelle, who tried the recipe, said it’s “wonderfully quick” to make and is “absolutely gorgeous with a piece of crusty bread”.
Another, Amy Texan, said it’s the “most wonderful quick soup ever… it’s been 10 years since I first made it… and I’ll be enjoying it the rest of my life”.
Nigella Lawson’s pea and pesto soup recipe
Ingredients:
375 grams of frozen peas
Two spring onions (trimmed but whole)
One teaspoon Maldon salt (or ½ teaspoon table salt)
Half a teaspoon of fresh lime juice
Four tablespoons pesto
Two tablespoons pinenuts (optional)
Method
Fill a kettle and put it on to boil. When it’s boiled, measure 750ml of boiled water into a pan, and put on the hob to come back to a boil.
Add the frozen peas, spring onions, salt and lime juice to the pan and let everything bubble together for seven minutes.
Discard the spring onions and blitz the peas and their liquid with the pesto in a blender.
Pour the liquidised soup back into the pan and keep warm over gentle heat until you are ready to ladle into bowls.
If using, tip the pinenuts into a small frying pan, and toast over medium heat until they begin to colour. Sprinkle over each bowl of soup.
People who have made the ever-so-quick recipe have made a few suggestions of their own.
One amateur cook recommended adding grated cheese while another suggested serving it with garlic bread on the side.
More ingredient additions have included strips of bacon chopped up and added to the soup and chopping up the spring onion and keeping that in the recipe.
Starrynoir posted to the Nigella Lawson cooking website that the chef’s pea soup is one of their “go-to cold weather soups”.
Sara S posted: “I love this soup, it’s easy, comforting and healthy as much as tasty. I used to add a piece of robiola cheese and some bread, to obtain a complete dinner.”
