Peasoup with peppermint and grilled salmon

Sound weird? I also thought that when I saw the recipe in one of the Estoninan newspaper…so you have a green pea soup which tastes like peppermint and which is served with salmon. Strange, right? But, as said in last post, you should eat fish every week and I try to be open for new tastes and challenges, so I decided to give this recipe a try.

Originally it should serve 4 but I don’t know whether it was because my plates were to big or I measured the quantities wrong, but I could only squeeze 3 platefuls of soup out of it. Ok, you might have salmon enough for 4 but in case you are serving it for four not for two as I did, I suggest you to increase the amount of ingredients.

And what else – please don’t use chicken stock or any other stock to season the soup. I had this plan at the beginning – you know, whenever you are doing a creamy soup and are not satisfied with the taste (maybe it is too bland) then if you pour some stock in it, it usually comes out ok every time. But with this soup using stock is forbidden. Seriously. You would just kill the taste of peas and peppermint and that would ruin the soup.

500 g salmon

400 g frozen green peas

50 g butter

2 small onion, chopped

150 ml dry white wine

salt

500 ml water

handful of chopped peppermint leaves

2 tbsp olive oil

juice of a half lemon

0.5 tsp pepper and some lemon pepper

200 ml cream (35%)

 

# Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan, add peas and onion and heat through. Add white wine and simmer for about 15 minutes. Season with salt, add the water and simmer until the peas are soft.

# Process the potful into a nice creamy soup. Push the soup through a sieve, add peppermint and process a bit more, to mix in the peppermint.

# Cut the salmon into four, rub in with olive oil and salt and fry until browned on each side (for about 2 min). Then place salmon in an oven dish, sprinkle with lemon juice and pepper and bake at 190 degrees C for 6 minutes.

# Add the cream to the soup and bring to boil. Adjust seasoning – you might want to add some salt. Serve immediately – place soup into a soup bowl, put salmon in the centre and top it of with some whipping cream (not sweet!).

Indeed, this was something different. With all its freshness it is a perfect summer soup. A nice presentation as well, so if you are looking a first course to impress your guests, this is it.