Ham hock

Pea, ham, and gorgonzola soup

Posted by Gary

If you’re not interested in reading the blurb before the recipe, feel free to use this link to the recipe.

Pea, ham, and gorgonzola soup

Hello reader,

Tonight’s meal is inspired by Lorraine Elliot and Friday’s post on Not Quite Nigella. It was a best of five post, and number one was pea and ham soup. I highly recommend Lorraine’s blog. Many of my weekend meals are inspired by her posts.

The first week of July is often the coldest in Canberra, so it’s a good month for all things comforting. The comfort of the people I love. Comfort food. Comfortable clothes to fit my growing frame and accommodate my winter coat!!!

Lorraine’s recipe doesn’t include gorgonzola. I got that idea from the cauliflower soup I made a few weeks ago. Cheese in soup is sheer indulgent enjoyment.

How has your week been? On a scale of 1 to 10, mine has been 7. It started poorly last Sunday evening. Queensland and NSW played the second game of this year’s State of Origin series. We were defeated convincingly. At work, my days have been enjoyable. I am always buoyed to be working with intelligent and capable people. In the evening, though, I continue to indulge in refined, processed, sugar-laden products. My chocolate cravings persist.

PHOTOS

Recipe

Equipment

  • Frying pan
  • Pressure cooker
  • Stick blender

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Heat up a frying pan and add some RBO.
  2. Sauté the onions, fennel, celery, and garlic until fragrant and changing colour.
  3. Transfer the onions, fennel, celery, and garlic to the pressure cooker.
  4. Add the MSG, anchovy fillets, split peas, ham hock, bay leaves and vegetable stock to the pressure cooker and cook for 50 minutes.
  5. Open the pressure cooker when the internal pressure equilibrates with the outside pressure.
  6. Remove the cooked ham hock (and bones if the bones have slipped out) from the soup.
  7. Add the frozen peas, so the residual heat cooks them.
  8. Puree the soup with a stick blender to make it smoother.
  9. Add chunks of gorgonzola to the soup.
  10. Remove the meat from the bone and pull it into small pieces.
  11. Ladle soup into a bowl and add the ham.
  12. Season the soup with pepper.
  13. Give thanks to the Lord.
  14. Eat with a spoon.

PHOTOS

Serving options

This soup would have been great with a piece of well-buttered crusty sourdough bread. You could also add some garnish, like finely sliced chives or finely chopped parsley.

I have enough soup leftover to freeze in vacuum-sealed bags. I’ll reheat them in a water bath set to about 80 °C for 30 minutes and enjoy a warm bowl of soup after work.

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Thoughts on the soup

This was a heart-warming soup that was flavourful and unctuous. I’m grateful I have some leftovers. I put it into vacuum bags and have two portions in the freezer ready for later in the week.

Some people experience a lot of flatus after pea and ham soup. Tomorrow is going to be explosive. 😆💨

Final thoughts

  • What comforts you in winter?
  • What soup have you made recently?
  • Would you add gorgonzola to a pea and ham soup?

Bibliography and glossary

Winter coat

A winter coat is also known as abdominal adipose tissue!

Pal, Y. P., & Pratap, A. P. (2017). Rice Bran Oil: A Versatile Source for Edible and Industrial Applications. J Oleo Sci, 66(6), 551-556. https://doi.org/10.5650/jos.ess17061

Raman, V., Bussmann, R. W., & Khan, I. A. (2017). Which Bay Leaf is in Your Spice Rack? – A Quality Control Study. Planta Med, 83(12-13), 1058-1067. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0043-103963

Rose, D. J., Poudel, R., Van Haute, M. J., Yang, Q., Wang, L., Singh, M., & Liu, S. (2021). Pulse processing affects gas production by gut bacteria during in vitro fecal fermentation. Food Res Int, 147, 110453. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2021.110453

Torri, L., Aprea, E., Piochi, M., Cabrino, G., Endrizzi, I., Colaianni, A., & Gasperi, F. (2021). Relationship between Sensory Attributes, (Dis) Liking and Volatile Organic Composition of Gorgonzola PDO Cheese. Foods, 10(11). https://doi.org/10.3390/foods10112791

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Photo gallery

Green split peas
Celery and fennel
Ham hock
Anchovy fillets
Diced white onion
Pulled ham hock
Pea soup
Pea, ham, and gorgonzola soup
Pea, ham, and gorgonzola soup
Pea, ham, and gorgonzola soup
Pea, ham, and gorgonzola soup

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Yummy Lummy Slow cooker Ham Hock recipe

Posted by Gary
Saturday dinner. Slow cooker ham hock on sesame sweet potato mash with pickles. I cooked the ham hock for 8 hours. Mashed roasted sesame sweet potato. I made pickles with capsicum, red onion and spring ions.
Saturday dinner. Slow cooker ham hock on sesame sweet potato mash with pickles.
I cooked the ham hock for 8 hours, mashed the roasted sesame sweet potato, and made pickles with capsicum, red onion, and spring onions.

Yummy Lummy Slow cooker Ham Hock recipe

This slow cooker ham hock is prolonging my porcine cravings. I thought about making pea and ham soup but instead pulled pork from the ham hock with some roughly mashed sweet potato and pickled vegetables.

Recipe

Yummy Lummy slow cooker ham hock with mashed sweet potato and pickled vegetables

Here’s a comforting slow cooker ham hock with mashed sweet potato and pickled vegetables meal for one with enough leftover for lunches.

Ham hock bits

  • Ham hock
  • Chicken stock

Sweet potato bits

  • Sweet potato
  • Sesame oil
  • Sesame seeds
  • Poppy seeds
  • Olive oil
  • Iodised salt
  • Black pepper
  • Sour cream

Pickled vegetable bits

  • Capsicum
  • Spring onions
  • Red onion
  • Lime juice
  • Vinegar
  • Iodised salt
  • Brown sugar

Ham hock part

  1. Put the ham hock into the slow cooker

  2. Cover the ham hock with about 1 litre of chicken stock
  3. Cook the ham hock for 8 hours
  4. When the ham hock has cooked remove it from the cooking vessel and discard the liquid
  5. Remove and discard the skin and fat

  6. Shred the meat and leave in a bowl

Sweet potato part

  1. Wash the sweet potato

  2. Cut the sweet potato into cubes roughly 1 cm3



  3. Put them into a mixing bowl and add a good spurt of sesame oil and a slug of olive oil

  4. Use your hands to make sure you coat all the surfaces of the cubed sweet potato with the oil
  5. Add in the sesame seeds, poppy seeds, iodised salt and black pepper and use your hands to mix it all thoroughly

  6. Spread the sweet potato out on a baking tray and place it into a hot oven (250 °C/480 °F) for 35 minutes or until the sweet potato is soft enough so a butter knife penetrates it easily with almost no resistance
  7. Put the the sweet potato into a mixing bowl and mash it roughly
  8. You can do it smoothly if you like but I like being rough with my mashed starches
  9. It’s quite satisfying to have a rough mash, the mouthfeel in my opinion is better

Pickled vegetables part

  1. Wash a green capsicum and them roughly dice it
  2. Chop a red onion into small pieces
  3. Slice a spring onion
  4. Put the capsicum, red onion and spring onion into a sealable container
  5. Add some white vinegar
  6. Add some lime juice
  7. Add some iodised salt
  8. Add some brown sugar
  9. I did this a few hours ahead of time and made enough so I’d have some for the following night for dinner

The plating up part

  1. Spoon some mashed sweet potato onto a dinner plate

  2. Add the pulled pork from the ham hock on top of the mashed sweet potato
  3. Spoon some of the pickled vegetables and place next to the mashed sweet potato
  4. As an option add a dollop of sour cream

The blogging part

  1. Shoot a photograph
  2. Eat the meal
  3. Wash the dishes
  4. Write the recipe
  5. Write the blog post
  6. Hope your friends and readers share the post on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest

Disclaimer

I have no culinary training nor qualifications.

This post is not intended to convey any health or medical advice. If you have any health concerns about anything you read, please contact your registered medical practitioner.

The quantities are indicative. Feel free to vary the quantities to suit your taste.

I deliberately do not calculate energy for dishes. I deliberately default to 500 Calories or 500,000 calories because I do not make these calculations.

Main Course
Australian
Ham hock, Mashed sweet potato, Pickled vegetables, Slow cooker

Photographs

This is a gallery of photographs. Click on one thumbnail to open the gallery and then scroll through the photos.

Ham hock ready for the slow cooker.
Ham hock ready for the slow cooker.
Diced sweet potato
Diced sweet potato
Diced sweet potato with seasoning
Diced sweet potato with seasoning
Diced sweet potato with seasoning in a baking tray.
Diced sweet potato with seasoning in a baking tray.
Sweet potato out of the oven, ready for mashing.
Sweet potato out of the oven, ready for mashing.
Slow cooker ham hock
Slow cooker ham hock
Saturday dinner. Slow cooker ham hock on sesame sweet potato mash with pickles. I cooked the ham hock for 8 hours. Mashed roasted sesame sweet potato. I made pickles with capsicum, red onion and spring ions.
Saturday dinner. Slow cooker ham hock on sesame sweet potato mash with pickles. I cooked the ham hock for 8 hours. Mashed roasted sesame sweet potato. I made pickles with capsicum, red onion and spring ions.
Saturday dinner. Slow cooker ham hock on sesame sweet potato mash with pickles. I cooked the ham hock for 8 hours. Mashed roasted sesame sweet potato. I made pickles with capsicum, red onion and spring ions.
Saturday dinner. Slow cooker ham hock on sesame sweet potato mash with pickles. I cooked the ham hock for 8 hours. Mashed roasted sesame sweet potato. I made pickles with capsicum, red onion and spring ions.

Questions and answers

Why rough rather than smooth?

It’s like peanut paste; I always go for crunchy rather than smooth. Smooth suggests fancy. I’m not fancy. Rough is also tough. Rough gonococci, unlike smooth gonococci, can evade the complement system and go on to cause disseminated gonococcal infection (DGI) and create havoc in joints, the heart and occasionally the brain.

Final thoughts

Do you like eating ham hock?
Do you like it rough?
Did you ever think I’d mention gonococci in a recipe post?

How to make super green pea and ham soup | Yummy Lummy

Posted by Gary

I’ve made some really fart worthy pea ham soup for Yummy Lummy before but the focus in this recipe is to get it to look green and taste good too. My previous attempts have focussed on the taste and flavour [My first go http://yumlum.co/2k2oA4Z and then the repeat a week later http://bit.ly/2ki5w0c] but they ended up looking a yellow-brown colour.

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Super-green Pea ham soup made by Gary Lum
Super-green Pea ham soup

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Pea and ham soup with an emphasis on the green | Yummy Lummy

This recipe is about two things, flavour and looks. I wanted the soup to be green rather than a yellow-brown like my previous attempts.

  • 1 Ham hock
  • 500 g Green split peas
  • ½ Potato ((small cubes))
  • ½ White onion ((diced))
  • 500 g Frozen peas
  • 2 L Chicken stock
  1. Wash the split peas and empty them into the slow cooker chamber.
  2. Add the onion, cubed potato and the packet of frozen peas.
  3. Place the ham hock on top of everything and then pour in 2 litres of chicken stock.
  4. Put the slow cooker bucket into the slow cooker and seal it with the lid. Set the timer to 6 hours and let it cook.
  5. After the 6 hours, remove the cooking vessel and then remove the ham hock and begin to peel off the skin and pull the muscle bundles apart and put into a clean bowl. Discard the bones.
  6. With a stick blender, process everything in the cooking vessel until it is smooth.
  7. Plate up by adding some ham to the bottom of a bowl and add a dollop of sour cream plus ¼ of a teaspoon of chilli flakes for a spicy kick.
  8. Garnish with spring onions and chives.
  9. Shoot a photograph and then eat the soup.
  10. Wash the dishes and then write the recipe up.
  11. Write a blog post and hope your friends on social media share the recipe and make you famous 🤣🤣😂
This is enough soup for 4 servings. If you live alone, I suggest freezing aliquots and then using a microwave oven to heat it up for lunches and/or dinners.

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Frequently asked questions

Will this make me fart?

I reckon it will. It all depends on your bowel’s microbiome. If you’re lucky, you can really stink up the place. Just don’t light a match if you fart under the sheets.

Can I make this soup vegetarian?

Yes, but it wouldn’t be pea and ham soup. If you don’t add the ham hock and if you use vegetable stock, you’ll have pea soup. I reckon it would taste okay, but for me, I need the ham in it for the flavour.

Can I eat this for lunch?

Yes, definitively, just don’t attend meetings afterwards if you’re prone to farting a lot.

Can I eat this soup cold the next day?

Yes, but all the fat would be congealed and it wouldn’t be that appealing in my opinion.

Social media

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The Mystery Bloggers Award

Over the weekend my friend Jennifer nominated Yummy Lummy for an award. I’ve been trying to focus this blog on recipes and so I wrote about the Mystery Bloggers Award on my other personal journal blog.