The inspiration to make pea soup with ricotta came from the Ikea catalogue. I know, right? I love the Ikea catalogue, it always has those beautiful photos of homes that are filled with stuff yet never look messy. I don’t know how they do it, I also have the house filled with cute stuff, but I seem to never achieve the same level of balance between the objects and the ambience. But that doesn’t matter. One of these beautiful bowls in a beautiful kitchen featured ricotta and pea soup.

I was instantly inspired, but it took me some time to actually make my pea soup. Until my boyfriend started working again, and I started finding myself alone at lunch time. When this happens, I tend to eat whatever, whenever. Not very healthy, but alas I do have this habit. So sometimes I try to force myself to eat healthy stuff, and try to stick with a fixed time to eat. It’s not easy.

Pea soup sounded healthy enough, plus I had rescued a package of ricotta cheese at the supermarket the day before its expiry date and I needed to do something with it, fast. So I came up with my own ricotta and pea soup recipe. With sautéed onion and fresh thyme, because I had also found fresh thyme at a good price at the same grocery store.

Green pea and ricotta soup recipe:

• 300 g frozen peas
• 150 g ricotta
• 1/2 small yellow onion
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 1/2 tbsp broth concentrate
• salt and pepper to taste
• 8-10 fresh thyme stems

Set 500 ml of water in a pot and bring to a boil. When it boils, add the broth concentrate. I used beef, but vegetable stock can be used too, to make it vegetarian. Alternatively, you can use a stock cube. Add the frozen peas to the stock and let them simmer for a few minutes, then remove the pot from the heat, leaving the peas in. In the meantime, mince the half onion. Set a frying pan on medium heat and melt the butter, then add the onion. Sauté the onion in the butter on medium heat for 3-4 minutes, then add the thyme stems, whole. After a couple of minutes, add a few tablespoons of broth to the frying pan, and cover with a lid, keeping the heat medium-low.

After cooking the onion covered for a few minutes, remove the lid and transfer the peas from the broth to the frying pan. Sauté the peas together with the onion and thyme for a few minutes, then transfer the whole content of the frying pan to the pan with the broth. Add the ricotta, salt and pepper to taste and blend, always keeping away from the heat. I added 1/3 tsp of salt and a couple of twists of freshly ground pepper. Keep in mind that the soup could still be too sweet after blending the peas, so check the salt again after blending.

Serve immediately, or store for later. The soup will set and thicken as it cools.

It’s funny how sometimes things just won’t go the right way. I made this soup, left it to cool and photographed it in two shiny bowls, with a very shiny spoon laying next to the bowls. Big mistake. I just couldn’t find a way to fix all the reflections on the sides of the bowls and on the spoon, but I thought I did my best. Then I got hungry and ate some of this soup. After eating, when I downloaded the photos to my computer, I realized that the reflections were worse than I thought and had to re-shoot. Too bad that in the meantime half of the soup had disappeared in my stomach. Oh well. It’s just one bowl in this photo shoot, but at least it’s matte. And the shiny spoon has been replaced with a matte butter knife, because why not.