We’re in the heart of winter, which means it’s the appropriate time for soups made with legumes. As we’ve mentioned before, legumes play a dominant role in Greek cuisine. The most usual way to cook legumes in Greece is to make soups.

Today we’ve got a lovely, smooth split pea soup and we are going to serve it with sautéed cubes of sínglino, an extremely delicious charcuterie from Lakonia, in the SE parts of the Peloponnese region. Sínglino is smoked pork, flavoured with sage and orange and conserved with additional pork fat. Unique in flavor, hard to find, but totally worth it!

Split pea soup with sínglino

Yield: 5 servings

4 tablespoons esti extra virgin olive oil + 1 tablespoon more

1 white onion finely chopped

1 carrot finely chopped

1 celery stalk finely chopped

½ kilo split peas (rinsed before used)

1 ½ – 2 litres beef or vegetable stock

200 gr whole piece of sínglino (or pancetta ) cut into small cubes.

Salt

Pepper

In a large pan and over medium heat sauté in the heated olive oil (4 tablespoons) onion, carrot and celery. When well sautéed, add the split pea and enough stock to cover plus some more.  Let simmer until the pea is well cooked and the soup is thickened. While cooking, stir from time to time and keep the liquid balanced- split peas (as all legumes) tend to absorb the liquid quickly- so add stock if the soup becomes to dry or too thick. Once cooked season with salt and pepper.

In a frying pan, heat a tablespoon olive oil. Sauté the sínglino (or pancetta) cubes until light brown.

Serve the soup immediately topped with the sínglino cubes.