In the Bag: Creamy Pea and Chicken Soup

This is supposed to be an entry to this month’s “In the Bag” competition over at A Slice of Cherry Pie. If it’s too late to make the roundup, then it’s just a post of a yummy soup.

Here in the Pacific Northwest we have an interesting summer phenomenon. We call it “Fall.” You see, summer kind of comes and goes. One day will be beastly hot and send us all scurrying for the swimming pool and thinking about what kind of salad to have for dinner. The next day we’ll need windbreakers in the morning, and there will be enough breeze all day long to make you feel like a little soup for lunch might be a good thing. At first this sort of annoyed me; come on, I though, pick a season. But now I rather like it. When I lived back east, in an area known for five months in a row of weather forecasts that consisted of, “Hazy, hot and humid, with a chance of afternoon thunderstorms,” we’d get to early August and I’d start thinking, “An overcast drizzly cool day would be a pretty welcome break right about now…” but it seldom happened. Now it happens all the time.

And so, because of this phenomenon, I created this soup using some springy/summery vegetables, but with a little weight in the form of the chicken to warm you and stay with you a bit. I bought the peas, but I had a yellow squash that came in my Community Sponsored Agriculture box. It was perfectly fine, but had some appearance issues. It wasn’t really pretty enough to just eat steamed or sautéed, but there was nothing wrong with it, so I added it to this soup. You could just add another half cup or so of peas if you didn’t have the squash, or you could use zucchini or another summer squash in its place.

In keeping with the In the Bag ingredients for this month, I added some grated parmesan at the end for flavor and a little saltiness. Be sure you taste the soup after adding the parmesan, but before adding any additional salt. Depending on your palate, you may find the parmesan (and the pancetta used at the beginning) make it salty enough.

This soup is going to be my lunch for the next few days, along with a slice of toasted bread with radish butter (a stick of butter with a half dozen radishes that have been diced up fine mashed into it). If you have an unseasonably cool summer day, you might give this a try. It would also be fine with frozen peas as an early Spring luncheon or starter to an early Spring dinner. It’s a lovely shade of pale green flecked with the darker green tarragon, and has the flavor of the peas and the chicken, but with a hint of licorice from the tarragon.

Creamy Pea and Chicken Soup
makes 6 servings

1 teaspoon olive oil
4 slices pancetta
1 ½ pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts, cubed
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium yellow squash, cubed (optional, or you could use zucchini, or just another handful or two of shelled peas)
1 ½ - 2 cups shelled fresh peas
2 cups chicken broth
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup grated parmesan, plus extra for garnish
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
Salt and pepper

In a Dutch oven or large sauce pan over medium high heat crisp the pancetta in a teaspoon of olive oil. Remove from pan and reserve. Add cubed chicken and brown, about 7 minutes. Remove chicken from pan with a slotted spoon and reserve.

Reduce heat to medium, add onion to pan and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add peas and squash and cook until soft, about 7 to 10 minutes. Add chicken broth and bring to a simmer. Remove pan from heat and puree peas, squash, onion with a handheld immersion blender, or in a stand blender (take care when pureeing hot liquids in a blender; remove the center venting piece from the blender, but hold a dishcloth over the opening to avoid having the hot liquid spray everywhere, making a huge mess and potentially burning you and anyone in the vicinity). The soup can be as chunky or as smooth as you like. I left some very small pieces of vegetable in mine to give it a little heft.

Return the pureed soup to the heat and add the reserved chicken. Bring the liquid to a bare simmer and let cook until the chicken is cooked through, about 5 more minutes.

Add ½ cup cream, ½ cup grated parmesan, and 1 tablespoon chopped tarragon. Stir to distribute through the liquid. Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

To serve, ladle soup into bowls, and scatter with reserved pancetta, chopped, and a scattering of grated parmesan.

In the Bag: Pecan Crusted Roast Pork Loin with Qunice Glazed Pears

I’m not really a competitive person. I didn’t play team sports as a child, and I generally don’t get involved in competitive situations as an adult. But I’m willing to make an exception for certain “food challenges.” These aren’t so much about competition as they are about seeing who comes up with what interesting ideas. No one “wins” and yet everyone wins, because ideas are proliferated, and we all benefit from the creativity of others.

In this case, the challenge (a link to Julia’s homepage is here if you want to look around further) is to take three seasonal ingredients and create a dish using them. The ingredients for January are pears, nuts, and lemon. I considered the combinations that immediately occurred to me—a pear crumble or crisp with chopped nuts in the topping, or a salad with candied nuts and pears. But I kept thinking, wanting to create something a little more unexpected.

I worked around the idea of coming up with a savory dish, something for a nice weekend dinner. That’s mostly when I have the opportunity to cook these days. We’ve been eating a lot of steak lately, so I was hoping to find something that we could have instead. Since I love pork loin, and pork and pears go nicely together, that was the direction in which I moved. I’m not usually much of one for chutney or fruit relish with meat, so I made the pears more of a side dish, cutting them into slices instead of cubes.

The first time I made this, I used Bocs pears. The second time I used Asian. My husband said he preferred the Bosc, but I felt the Asian added a wonderful undertone of honey to the whole dish that was a sparkling surprise dimension. Either type of pear would be fine, but I highly recommend the Asian if you’re feeling adventurous. I had never had an Asian pear at all before this, but now I’m on my way to the grocery store to buy some more to eat out of hand. And I love the idea of using quince paste. It’s seasonal and quite underappreciated in this country. Generally you see it recommended as an accompaniment for cheese, and that’s about it. It has so many potential uses in a more starring role; it’s a shame to relegate it to a supporting player in every instance.

I mixed my own honey mustard, but prepared honey mustard could be used for those in a hurry. I also used bread crumbs that I made from old bread and stored in the freezer. I wouldn’t recommend the finely powdered store bought variety. They really do need to have some heft to them. I specified either all stock or a wine and stock combination in the pears. It’s really a matter of preference.


Pecan Crusted Roast Pork Loin with Quince Glazed Pears

1 pork loin roast, approx 2 lbs
¾ c pecans
2 c fresh bread crumbs
3 T Dijon mustard
1 T honey

1 T butter
4 Bosc or Asian pears
1 T quince paste
¼ c white wine
½ c chicken stock
(or ¾ c chicken stock)
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt & freshly ground pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.

Toast pecans in a skillet over medium heat until just starting to brown. Allow to cool slightly, then combine with bread crumbs in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse 10-12 times until pecans are in fairly small pieces and well incorporated into bread crumbs. Turn crumbs out onto parchment on the countertop, or into a large rimmed baking sheet.

Combine mustard and honey in a bowl (commercial honey mustard could also be used). Brush top and sides of the roast with honey mustard and roll in crumb mixture until well coated. Press extra crumbs to the surface of the roast to ensure it’s coated all over.

Place roast on a rack in a roasting pan. Roast at 475 for 20 minutes. Reduce oven heat to 400 and continue cooking for another 40 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 160 degrees F. Remove roast from oven and allow to rest 10 minutes. Carve into slices and serve with pears.

For pears, peel, core and slice pears into wedges. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sautee pears in butter for 8 to 10 minutes, until just turning golden brown. Add the quince paste and stir to let it coat the pears as it melts. Add wine (if using) and stock, and reduce heat to medium. Continue cooking over medium heat until pears are soft, but not disintegrating, and quince paste is completely melted. Add the juice of 1 lemon, salt and pepper to taste. Serve with pork.

I served this first with oven roasted potatoes and sautéed Brussels sprouts, and the second time with mashed potatoes and a very disappointing sauté of spring onions. Next time I’ll have to consult the Fine Cooking in which I originally saw the article on using scallions as more than just an oniony garnish, and find an actual recipe, of which there were several, if I recall correctly. The end result of my efforts in this case was limp and bitter, so I need to see what I may have done wrong.

In both cases, however, the pork and pears went beautifully together and made for a very pleasant Saturday night dinner.