Mark made a pasta soup for me last week which I enjoyed very much. It inspired me to make one for myself. When I was given some very salty, thinly sliced ham to use up, I seized the opportunity. I made a pasta soup adapted from this bacon, bean and pasta soup with the following ingredients:

1 onion, chopped finely – no salt when frying
1 tbsp minced garlic
120g dry pasta
1 carrot halved lengthway (just to flavour broth)
1 tin flageolet beans
0.5 pack green beans, sliced lengthways
chicken stock from 0.5 cube (no more as ham was v salty)
bay leaf
2 tbsp tomato puree
3 large handfuls sliced ham, sliced and torn into bite size pieces
lemon juice
pepper

Note: My soup was a bit cloudy, I think it was caused by the tomato puree.

20 Feb 2013
I made a veggie version of this for my uni friends, replacing the meat with chestnut mushrooms, swapping chicken stock for veg stock and leaving out the tomato puree. I served it with a small bowl of harissa and creme fraiche for them to blend in if required and a sliced giraffe loaf from Sainsburys. They loved it.

1 Feb 2013

Kale disintegrates in this soup – don’t use again.