Beyond Pea Soup

With a few simple ingredients including fresh peas, tapioca, butter, water, and salt and pepper to taste make a sumptuous soup in less than thirty minutes. The soup’s thick and smooth consistency is because of the tapioca while the butter gives it a rich and luxurious taste. You can enjoy the peas at its utmost flavor and freshness when its delicate sweetness stands out. For best results, use freshly shelled peas to make this recipe. This recipe is great to try when peas are in season. Otherwise, you can still make one of these soups recipes with frozen peas. Bake the peas out of the pod and wash them gently yet thoroughly by placing them in a colander and under cold running water before cooking the fresh peas.

Tapioca is a vegetable-based thickening agent. Instead of using flour or cornstarch to thicken the soup, you can use tapioca to make the dish turn pasty or taste floury. Tapioca adds a sumptuous texture and a neutral taste. Sold in flour form or in pearls, tapioca is also known as Manihot esculenta or dulcis. It is the starch of the tropical cassava root and is made by grating the fresh roots and allowed to dry and ferment. Then the grated roots are pressed and baked into a flat cake then powdered to make pure starch.

When the flour or starch is diluted in water or moistened, quickly heated tapioca is achieved. Quick-cooking tapioca thickens the soup excellently. But it will leave tiny gel-like particles suspended in the liquid. If you don’t like this appearance and texture, use tapioca flour to make the soup. You can process quick-cooking tapioca in the blender until it is reduced to a fine powder. Tapioca pearls derived from tapioca flour and are already cooked. They are often used for making desserts and bubble tea drinks.

Ingredients

300gms shelled peas

1 cup tapioca, washed

6 cups water

2 tablespoons butter

Seasonings to taste

1. Add all ingredients in a kettle and allow it to cook for 20-25 minutes. Keep stirring often. Cover it. Let it cook on medium flame.

2. Towards the end add the seasonings. Stir well. Then strain this mixture and serve hot in a soup bowl.