welcome friends Jules and I had a ham which means we've got a ham bone left
over and I'm going to make today what is probably the quintessential og Canadian
dish this is something that would have been made here in Canada since the first
French settlers arrived in new France with samuel de champlain so in this pot
I've put the ham bone and a little bit of the fat and skin from the outside
next into the pot is just diced carrot celery and onion and you don't have to
dice it very nicely you just have to get it in the pot this is just to add flavor
to the stock it will be removed and it won't be in the soup at the end so all
of that goes in next in are some bay leaves and whole peppercorns
I don't grind the pepper I just put it in whole you want to be able to remove
them once the stock is finished and then I just covered that with some water now
I'm just going to bring this up to a boil skim off any foam that happens on
the top put a cover on it drop it down to a low simmer and let it simmer for
probably an hour and a half or two hours once the stock has simmered for that
long I'm going to strain out all of the solids and then I'm going to cut any ham
off of the bone and set that aside to use it in the soup okay so we've got
some really good ham stock now and I'm gonna let the ham bone cool down so that
I can cut the meat off of it which gives me time to move on to the rest of the
soup first I'm going to put in some lard and this is pure leaf lard and I'm gonna
use that to fry the vegetables you could use any fat that you want I'm using lard
because it is appropriate for this dish historically to have used lard
originally the soup would have been made by the earliest settlers to Canada and
they would have used things that they were able to bring over in the ships
when they came from France and that would have been cured salt pork lard
because it never goes bad and dried peas and the next ingredients
are what I would call contemporary traditional onion celery and carrot when
you go back into the historical record usually you would see carrot and onion
because those are root vegetables you would grow them in the summertime you're
able to keep them all winter they kept really well and so you'd always have
them celery is something that you might not find in the recipes from the late
1600s early 1700s it's not something that was always available and you can
find recipes where turnips were put in and parsnips were put in other root
vegetables would have been added to the soup just to kind of fill it out so
we're just gonna saute these down to soften them which brings us to the peas
now most historical recipes late 1600s early 1700s 1800s asked for whole yellow
peas most contemporary recipes today ask for split yellow peas because they're
easier to deal with if I'd had time to actually drive around town and find
whole yellow peas I would use a mix half-and-half I like the creaminess the
way that the the split peas break down in the soup but I do like having a whole
yellow pea in the soup to remind me of what I'm eating
I didn't plan ahead so I have split yellow peas you don't need to soak this
split yellow peas which also makes this a faster soup to make than if you were
using whole Peas so those go in and then in goes the
stock
we're just give that a stir put a lid on and let that simmer until the peas are
soft while that's simmering I'm going to slice the ham off of the bone and we
don't add the ham until after the peas are cooked okay the peas are cooked down
really nicely I think we're at the point where we can add the ham in now you want
to taste your seasoning at this point see if you need to add any pepper or
salt you probably won't need salt because there should be enough from the
ham stock let's just see I wouldn't add any salt to that or any pepper at this
point what I would add is just a little bit of acid and this is a apple cider
vinegar but it's made from ice cider so the apples were left on the tree to
freeze then turned into cider and then turn into vinegar and so it's got this
incredibly rich deep flavor maybe a tablespoon or so and that will just
brighten all of the other flavors so we'll stir that in and now we'll add the
ham in and at this point you're just adding the ham in to heat it it doesn't
really need to be cooked at all you just want to bring it up to the same
temperature as the rest of the soup before you serve it now you don't need
to serve this today and in fact this will taste better three or four days
from now I can't wait for a taste so I like those macaroons they were really
good but wait until you taste this french-canadian pea soup I'm not sure
how you compare macaroons pretty easily so look at that it's thick
and rich the way it should be carrots and ham I mean so I used lard to
fry the veg you don't have to use lard to fry the veg but I put it in there
because traditionally that's what would have been used all right yeah and I read
a lot of history Oracle documents that said the early
French settlers raised hogs for the lard not the meat because they used it in so
many things so even probably soap yeah all kinds of yeah it has so many uses
don't let you test it first is it too hot no that's really good I like that in
so many ways it's plain in that there's not a lot of spicing there's pretty much
no spicing some peppercorns went in with with the ham bone but there's so much
flavor from the other ingredients that you don't need spicing great for a day
of fur trapping log and canoeing I might just sit down and watch a Raptors game
and then have some macaroons wrappers on a streak they're gonna do what my leaps
can't thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you