Random Recipes #24 Erbsensuppe or Pea Soup

The January Random Recipe challenge from Dominic at Belleau's Kitchen has us cooking from another person's recipe collection and so I called on a colleague at work to pick a recipe for me from one of her books. This is the book she chose:

And the recipe was Erbsensuppe or Pea Soup, perfect for the January weather we are currently getting in Devon, where even when it is not very cold it has been very wet and very dreary.

Now I do not know more than a couple of words of German so she very kindly wrote out a translation of the recipe for me and I should have read this through more carefully before going shopping. I would have realised that the sausages and bacon I was picking up from the supermarket were not at all what the recipe called for.
I should have had a slab of smoked bacon and cured sausage, so my soup was not so German, but still very tasty.

Inspired by how good it was with the wrong sausage and bacon I paid a little more attention my colleagues comments and went online to the German Deli to source some proper German sausage. For the smoked bacon I paid a trip to my local butcher and bought a piece off a smoked gammon joint. Then I was able to make the soup again with a little more authenticity. Visually it may not seem so different but the flavour and texture of the German sausage was quite different and much better.

Pea Soup Recipe

300g dried green peas (soaked overnight in 1.5 litres water)
200g smoked bacon in the piece (soaked with the peas overnight)
1 'Bund Suppengemüse' (soup vegetables:1 leek, 1-2 carrots, quarter of a celeriac root &  parsley)
1 onion
400g waxy potatoes
half tsp dried marjoram
vegetable stock (.25 litre approx)
250g cured pork sausages
1 bunch parsley
salt & pepper

1. Put the soaked peas and bacon into a pan and bring to the boil.
2. Simmer, covered, for 1.5 hours or until the peas are soft.
3. Wash, peel and chop the soup vegetables.
4. Peel the onion and chop finely. 
5. Peel and chop the potatoes into 1 cm dice.
6. Add all the soup vegetables, onion and potatoes to the pan with the marjoram.
7. Simmer for a further 30 minutes.
8. Add additional stock if there is not enough liquid in the pan.
9. Peel the cooked sausage and cut into small cubes and add to the soup.
10. Simmer for a further 10 minutes.
11. Remove the piece of bacon and cut the meat into small cubes and add back to the soup.
12. Chop the parsley finely.
13. Season to taste with salt and pepper and sprinkle on the chopped parsley.
14. Serve hot.
15. The soup can be garnished with a little sauerkraut or creme fraiche.

The sauerkraut garnish was surprisingly good.