Chilled Pea and Mint Soup

The first properly warm evening of the year arrived last week. Not the tentative warmth of May, where you still carry a jacket, but the real thing: windows open, the garden smelling of cut grass, the kitchen too hot for anything involving the oven. That's when this soup earns its place.

Frozen peas. I'll say it plainly. Good frozen peas, picked and frozen within hours, are better than most of the fresh peas you'll find in a supermarket, which have been sitting around losing their sweetness since Tuesday. If you grow your own and can pod them straight into the pan, magnificent. Otherwise, a bag from the freezer is not a compromise. It's common sense.

The method is almost embarrassingly simple. Soften a shallot in butter. Add stock and peas. Cook for three minutes. Blend with mint. Chill. The whole thing takes less time than deciding what to order from a takeaway, and it tastes like July in a bowl. The colour alone is worth it: a vivid, clean green that looks like you've tried much harder than you have.

I make this more often than any other cold soup. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago with a note that said: peas, mint, cold bowl, the garden. That's still all there is to say about it. Right food, right evening.