Broad bean and mint soup Today's soup making process was not an unqualified success but I learned from it. I chose to make broad bean and mint soup and yesterday the spouse duly tracked down and bought the broad bean pods as instructed. I got out two pints of home made chicken stock to defrost, noting that the supplies were running low. This morning the spouse brought the younger offspring out for a walk in Dun Laoghaire and I got up after Sunday Miscellany to start on the soup preparations. My mistake was to interpret the the instructions to mean that I was to use the pods, not the beans themselves. The recipe (one of Sophie Grigson's) says: "...Skin each bean by slitting the tough outer skin with a fingernail or a small sharp knife ..." For some reason I pictured runner beans and the way you have to remove the "thread" from them. So, having blanched the pods, I pushed out the beans, discarded them and prepared the pods for cooking. I then ...