We turn to soup a classic Spanish combination!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 2 € pp)
- salt
- 200 gr peas
- 100 g fresh pasta
- 1,2 litre chicken or jamón stock
- A pinch of cinnamon
- Fresh mint
- EV olive oil
- Black pepper
- Drops of lemon
- 2 slices jamón serrano (optional)
The combination peas + mint + jamón is more than classic in Catalonia and the whole Spain. It is also used vastly in Italy, where the cold cut used is the prosciutto.
The net is full of recipes of the classic version of the dish, let´s do something different. Let´s prepare a soup with fresh pasta. We will also substitute the jamón with stock of jamón, if we afford a bone otherwise we will use the cold cut.
To prepare the jamón stock we first blanch the bone for about 5 mins, we then change the water and starting from cold we simmer the bone with a carrot, a leek and a pinch of cinnamon for about 2 hours. One bone is enough for about 3 litres of stock. If we cannot find a jamón bone, we use chicken stock, we fry 2 slices of cheap jamón (serrano) till crispy and we add it, minced, when the soup is ready. But the best way is the jamón stock.
Before starting we also blanch the peas in salted water or in the stock for about 3 minutes. If we use frozen peas, we must fully defrost them first.
We prepare 100 gr fresh pasta with or without eggs, as we have learnt here. We pass the pasta from the machine, stopping at the dimension 4, as we want the pasta sheet to be relatively thin. We carry the pasta at the cutters of the machine and we make it tagliatelle. We arrange the tagliatelle on a wooden surface and we cut them in small squares, as shown at the photos.
We boil the quadretti (which means small squares) in a pot with salted water, for just one minute, as the pasta will continue to be cooked in the stock. When they are ready, we drain them and we wash them under running water, in order to remove their external starch which would spoil the stock.
We heat the stock adding some salt.
We arrange all the solid ingredients (peas and pasta) in plates (which must be also hot to keep soup´s temperature high for a longer time), we cover them with the very hot stock and we serve garnishing with abundant olive oil, black pepper, fresh mint and some lemon drops.
