Pea, Potato & Parsley Soup With Blue Cheese Breadcrumbs

Ingredients

• Olive oil

  Salad or cooking

  2 tbsp or 27g

• Onions

  Raw

  1 medium or 110g

• Potato

  Flesh and skin, raw

  3 Potato medium or 639g

• Vegetable Broth

  Organic - 365 Everyday Value

  4 cup or 960g

• Peas

  Green, frozen, unprepared

  4 cup or 536g

• Parsley

  Raw

  16 tsp or 20g

• Whole-wheat bread

  Commercially prepared

  1 slice or 28g

• Blue cheese

  ⅓ cup, crumbled, not packed or 45g

Directions

1. Chop onion. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and add the chopped onion.  Fry gently over a low to medium heat for 10 minutes, until soft and translucent.  Add the potato and stock and bring to the boil.
2. Simmer for 5 minutes, then add the peas and simmer for a further 5 minutes or until cooked through.
3. Remove about a quarter of the vegetables to a bowl, and then add the parsley to the saucepan.  Using a hand blender, (or food processor or liquidizer), blend the remaining soup until completely smooth.  Tip the reserved vegetables back into the saucepan - these will provide a lovely chunky texture to the otherwise smooth soup.  Taste and season accordingly.
4. Toast the slice of bread in a toaster or under the grill.  Using a mini-blender or food processor, blitz the toast just one or twice to create fairly large and chunky breadcrumbs, (eg. don't blitz for too long, you don't want fine breadcrumbs - a few larger lumps will add texture).
5. Heat a further 1 tbsp olive oil in a small frying pan.  When it is very hot, add the breadcrumbs and keep moving them around until they are deeply golden brown.  Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
6. After the breadcrumbs have cooled in the pan for a minute or two, crumble through the blue cheese and toss through the breadcrumbs.  Ladle the soup into bowls, and top each portion with a pile of breadcrumbs.  Serve immediately.