Pea Soup (Erweten soep)

We tried out "the famous Dutch pea soup" at one of the few really good places in the Hague "'t Hof van Eten", a small place but excellent food for brunches and breakfasts and a kindness of service that you're just not used to in Holland, then we also found another fantastic place "Le Gourmet" serving homemade pea soup, old style Dutch bistro where they serve the pea soup with two slices of rye bread and ham....
We decided to give it a go and do it ourselves... I found a really simple recipe on the net and we were off...
The ingredients are (for about 5 litres of soup):
- 750g-1kg of dried split peas;
- 1 leek;
- 250g of Bacon;
- a couple of carrots;
- one onion;
- a big "Rookwurst";
- one Celeriac root and some celery leaves;

Get a kilo of dried split peas and soak them in water.

Cut the Celeriac root, carrots and bacon into small cubes. Put the bacon in the pan, add some olive oil and let the bacon cook for 2 minutes. Then put the peas, Celeriac and carrots in a big pan with arround 3 litres of water (yep, soup for a week...), and let it boil for about an hour.

Then add the leek in small pieces, the rookwurst and let cook for about 20 minutes... Et voila... Dutch pea soup.