Pea and ham soup

My younger son is exceedingly partial to home made pea and ham soup. Even before he could pronounce the word "soup" properly, and called it "doup". This particular recipe was "Yummy doup". My grandad loved this soup too - I used to take him a frozen container or two up when I visited him. I've been making this soup for (counts on fingers) ooh, probably about 20 years now. Ever since I received an enormous stockpot as a wedding present. This has seen some heavy use. Over the years I've experimented with different things in it - potato - or not? Green split peas - or yellow ones? Chop the veg before putting them in, or bung 'em in whole and liquidise them at the end? This is the version that I generally make (and I get complaints now if I vary from it). It makes rather a lot - enough for 4 hungry people for 3 days - so I generally freeze 2/3 of it. It's great to know you have a pot of it in the freezer for emergencies.

Take a smoked gammon hock or ham bone, put it in the stock pot, cover with cold water, and bring to the boil. Skim off any scummy bits, then reduce the heat and simmer for a couple of hours until it's tender (the meat, obviously - you won't get the bones tender no matter how long you cook them).

Take the hock out and sit it on a plate, then skim the fat off the cooking water, which has now turned into wonderful smoky gammony stock (I put it through my skimmer jug, which separates the fat from the watery bits). Put the cooking water back in the pan, along with 500g of yellow split peas, 3 good-sized sticks of celery, 500g peeled and halved onions, 500g carrots. Bring to the boil again and simmer for at least an hour.

Meanwhile, once the hock has cooled down a bit, remove the skin, the blubber layer, the bones and the gristly bits, and you should be left with about 300-500g cooked ham. Chop this into cubes and put it on one side - NOT in the soup yet.

Once the peas are soft and the vegetables are tender, liquidise the veg. I use a slotted spoon to put them into the 1 litre beaker that came with my hand blender, and whizz them in that. It doesn't matter if you get some split peas liquidised too - just make sure that all the big lumps of veg are gone.

Return the liquidised veg to the pan, and add the cubed ham. Put in a good grinding of black pepper, and taste to see if it needs any salt. Simmer gently for another 5 mins or so, then serve. Makes lots!

If you're feeling keen, you can dice half the veg before putting them in to cook, then just fish out the un-diced big lumps - this gives a soup with a chunkier texture. But it takes a fair while, and the onions make me cry, so I tend to just peel them and put them in. I used to add a couple of diced potatoes as well, but I think I prefer it without. And as for using green split peas - well, if I didn't put so many carrots in, that would be fine, but it turns out a rather unappetising khaki if you have green peas and orange carrots. So we have a bright orangy-yellow pea and ham soup.