Chilled Broad Bean Soup with Mint

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy-bottomed saucepan
• •Stick blender or countertop blender
• •Fine-mesh sieve and ladle
• •Large bowl of iced water for blanching

Instructions

1. 1

   Shell and peel the beans

   Pod the broad beans. This takes longer than you think and is the price of admission. Bring a pan of well-salted water to a rolling boil. Drop the podded beans in for two minutes, no longer, then drain and plunge them into a bowl of ice-cold water. When they're cool enough to handle, slip each bean out of its grey outer skin by pinching one end. The bright green inner bean pops free. This is the bit that matters. Those grey skins are bitter and mealy, and no amount of blending will make them pleasant.

   This is good work to do sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of something cold. Radio on. No rush. The shelling and peeling is meditative if you let it be, tedious if you fight it.
2. 2

   Soften the onion

   Melt the butter with the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan over a low heat. Add the sliced onion and a good pinch of salt. Let it soften gently for eight to ten minutes, stirring now and then, until it's translucent and sweet but hasn't taken on any colour. Add the garlic for the last couple of minutes. You should be able to smell it, gentle and warm, not sharp or acrid.

3. 3

   Simmer with stock

   Add the peeled broad beans to the pan, keeping a small handful back for garnish. Pour in the stock. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for five minutes. The beans are already cooked from the blanching; you're just bringing everything together and letting the flavours get acquainted. Drop in the mint leaves for the final minute. They lose their brightness if you cook them longer.

4. 4

   Blend until smooth

   Take the pan off the heat. Blend until very smooth. This wants to be properly silky, not rustic. Push it through a fine sieve if you have the patience, pressing the solids with the back of a ladle to get every drop of that pale green liquid through. What you're left with should be the colour of new leaves in morning light.

   Sieving is not strictly necessary, but it makes the difference between good and quietly beautiful. For a dinner party, I'd sieve. For a Tuesday, I probably wouldn't.
5. 5

   Season and chill

   Stir in the crème fraîche and the lemon juice. Season with salt and white pepper. Taste it. The lemon should sharpen everything without announcing itself, a brightening, not a flavour. If it tastes flat, it needs more salt. If it tastes one-dimensional, a little more lemon. Cover and refrigerate for at least three hours, or until properly cold. The flavour will settle and deepen as it chills.

6. 6

   Serve cold

   Taste again once it's cold. Cold food often needs more seasoning than warm food, so adjust now. Ladle into chilled bowls. Drop a spoonful of crème fraîche into each, scatter over the reserved broad beans and a few torn mint leaves, and finish with a thread of your best olive oil. Serve it before it warms up. This soup is meant to be cold as a stone.

Chef Tips

• •The double-peeling is not optional. I know it looks like fussiness, but broad beans with their skins on make a murky, slightly bitter soup. Without them, you get something luminous and sweet. There are few better feelings than looking at that colour in the blender and knowing it came from your own patience.
• •Use a light stock. A heavy, dark chicken stock will muddy the colour and bully the delicate flavour of the beans. Vegetable stock is ideal, or a very pale chicken stock made from a raw carcass. Water works too, if your beans are truly good.
• •Serve it properly cold, not cool, not room temperature. Cold. Chill the bowls in the fridge for an hour before serving. Warm broad bean soup is a different thing entirely, and not the thing we're making tonight.
• •If you find yourself with broad beans past their best, the big starchy ones that arrive in late July, this isn't the soup for them. Those want braising with bacon and savory. This soup needs young beans, small and sweet, the ones that arrive when the season is still full of promise.

Advance Preparation

• •The soup must be made at least three hours ahead to chill properly. It improves with an overnight rest in the fridge, the flavours settling into each other.
• •The beans can be podded and double-peeled a day ahead and kept covered in the fridge. This spreads the work and makes the actual cooking almost effortless.
• •Keeps well in the fridge for up to two days. The colour may darken slightly but the flavour holds. Stir well and taste for seasoning before serving, as the cold will have muted things.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 300g)