In a large saucepan sautee’ the finely chopped oak-smoked garlic till it begins to sweat. Then add the red onion finely chopped and cook till it turns pink and juicy.
Reduce the flame to a minimum and add the bite-sized pieces of smoked bacon medallions.
Stir now and then to ensure that the bacon doesn’t stick to the saucepan and become too crisp, it must cook to a nice chewy yummy consistency and not get too crisp. Cook without a lid at this stage.
When the bacon has cooked completely and is almost turning crisp, remove this mixture into a bowl as we will use the same saucepan for preparing the rest of the ingredients of the soup so as to retain the beautiful juicy goodness that is in the pan and that also ensures we don’t use anymore extra oil.
Wash the baby spinach leaves and the green peas and add them into the saucepan along with the finely chopped chives and chicken stock. In case you are using stock cubes, I would say use the reduced salt variety because the smoked bacon is very salty already.
Add 300ml water and cook with lid on a medium flame for 25 minutes.
Puree the soup with a hand blender and add a generous amount of freshly cracked black pepper and some sea salt – I am stingy with the salt because I like to keep the salt to minimum when I am cooking anything withba bacon as an ingredient.
When the soup has been pureed, don’t fuss if a fewstray green peas escape the blender blades, it just makes the soup that muchmore wholesome and chewy while eating.
Now add in the garlic, red onion and bacon mixture and cook for another 7- 10 minutes.
Serve hot topped with a big spoon of chopped spring onion and herby croutons.
Perfect for an early supper with crusty bread and even better with a grilled white fish and white wine for a weekend meal.