Cheating on Winter Pea Soup: French Fridays with Dorie

It seemed like such a simple soup. Boil up some peas and romaine lettuce...puree and dinner. Perfect for a light Sunday night meal with just my son and husband...or so I thought. Everything was fine until I started to puree the soup with the immersion blender...SPARKS began to fly, and it wasn't romance, it was the FUSE and the immersion blender blown. My hands are still shaking from the shock of the blender blowing out.

The shock jolted my memory. I read an article not to long ago in the New York Times about the dangers of immersion blenders, primarily because people forget to unplug them before they untangle food that is caught in the bland.

I had cut the romaine into fairly small pieces, but I guess because it is stringy, a piece got stuck on the blade. I didn't even get a chance to risk cutting off a finger removing the tangled piece of lettuce instead I almost got electrocuted.

Moral of the story: DO NOT USE AN IMMERSION BLENDER WITH STRINGY VEGETABLES: lettuce, asparagus, swiss chard...etc.

To top it off I wasn't that impressed with the flavor of the soup. I was concerned from reading the ingredients that it was going to be too green, too sweet... it didn't have a grounding flavor to it, so I fried the bacon that was recommended for a garnish in the pot and left the fat.

It wasn't enough. I ended up pureeing the bacon bits into the soup using a regular blender...which Dorie had recommended in the first place.

But the soup still didn't excite me, so I liquored it up with 2 teaspoons of vermouth, but it still wouldn't yield enough flavor.

The addition of the bacon and the vermouth helped to give the soup a base and made it pleasant enough... I can't help but wonder if a recipe with maybe mint or a citrus might have worked better to add a little flair to such a light soup.

I reference a few recipes that I thought looked interesting. This recipe has basil oil...hmm. Spring Pea Soup and garlic and heavy cream to ground it.
This one has mint, and in other ways it is very similar to Dorie's recipe: Spring Pea Soup This recipe Pea Soup with Creme Fraiche adds a potato. That might have given it a rich texture. PS: Dorie seems to like watery soup. I remembered last time to use 2 less cups than she recommends.

What are your thoughts?

Note: As a member of French Friday's with Dorie I am not allowed to print the recipe. I invite you to take a look at this wonderful cookbook "Around My French Table" if you are interested in this or any other recipe I review.