Chilled Broad Bean Soup with Mint

The broad beans arrived at the market on a Saturday in late June, still in their fat, furry pods, and I knew what they were for before I'd paid for them. Some ingredients carry their recipe with them. These were going to be a cold soup, and it was going to be green, and it was going to taste like the week had finally earned its evening.

Shelling broad beans is slow work. Then you have to peel each one, pinching off the grey outer skin to get at the bright, tender bean inside. It's the kind of task that tests your willingness to be present in the kitchen, to do something properly because the result repays the effort. The colour alone is worth it: a green so vivid it looks almost artificial, but it's just what a broad bean looks like when you bother to undress it.

Blended with a little stock, some softened onion, and a handful of mint torn in at the last moment, it becomes something between a soup and a declaration. Light, clean, faintly sweet, with a grassiness that mint lifts without overwhelming. Chilled until properly cold and served with a spoonful of crème fraîche and a good pour of olive oil. This is a soup for the longest days of the year, for the kind of dinner party where people sit outside until the light finally goes, for the sort of evening you write down in the notebook because you know it won't come again quite like this.

A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. The quantities here are starting points. Your beans might be sweeter than mine, your stock saltier, your mint more or less punchy. Season and taste. Then taste again.