Corn soup

As tradition built it

Corn soup

About 50 minutes.

Ingredients

The soup

• 160ml split peas
• 240ml channa (chickpeas)
• 1.4 to 1.9 litres water
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 stalk chive
• 1 stalk celery
• 2 pimento peppers
• 4 ears corn
• 1 carrot
• 240ml pumpkin
• 1 packet vegetable soup mix
• 1, optional hot pepper
• 3, optional bouillon cubes
• about ¼ tsp salt

The dumplings

• 60ml flour
• 60ml cornmeal
• as needed water

Method

1. Wash the channa and pressure cook it about 15 minutes. Pressure cook the split peas separately, about 10 minutes.
2. Knead the flour and cornmeal with water to a semi stiff dough and cut it into 1cm pieces.
3. Clean the corn and chop it into 3 to 5cm pieces.
4. Chop the rest of the ingredients and add them to the pot of water.
5. When it boils, add the corn, dumplings, split peas and channa. Simmer about 20 minutes, stirring now and then, until the corn is cooked and the dumplings float.
6. Serve hot.

Notes

The recipe is Felix's, of Simply Trini Cooking. Chris De La Rosa, of CaribbeanPot, has no channa: he fries the onion, garlic, celery and herbs in oil first, simmers raw split peas 70 minutes with coconut milk, creamed corn, sweet potato and pumpkin until they break down, then adds the corn and cigar shaped flour dumplings for 15 to 20 minutes.

What a modern chef changes

Roasted Corn Stock, Blended Body

Method

1. Roast the corn cobs before they go into the pot, deglaze, and pass the finished broth through a chinois for a rounder, sweeter base than boiling them straight gives.
2. Blend a portion of the finished soup in a high-power blender for body, then return it to the pot, rather than relying on the split peas alone to thicken it.