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PEA-SOUP-1 - Pea soup with bacon
Peas and beans make superior cold-weather soups. They are
rich and full of protein. I developed this recipe as a
response to the flavorful but bland ``Senate Bean Soup''.
Split peas are very healthy, but when you go adding all of
this bacon to them the healthfulness is diminished a bit in
the interests of flavor.
500 g split peas
500 g bacon, chopped into small squares
100 g butter
2 celery stalks
65 g yellow onion (chopped)
250 ml instant mashed potato flakes (or, if you are a
purist, 500 ml of mashed potatoes)
3 minced garlic cloves
20 g parsley (fresh, chopped)
3 l beef broth (or any other kind of broth, or water)
1 bay leaf
12 peppercorns (cracked)
6 green cardamom seeds (cracked)
30 ml good cognac
2.5 ml Chinese hot pepper oil
(1) Soak the peas for 6 hours and no more. Use 5 ml
salt per quart of soaking water. Drain; discard
the soaking water.
(2) Cook the bacon until crisp; drain, dry, and dis-
card fat. The bacon should be crisp enough that
the pieces will crumble as you stir the soup while
it is cooking. I put it on my broiler pan and bake
it for 30 minutes at 200 deg. C.
(3) In a stockpot, put the cooked bacon, the butter,
the celery, and 150 g of the onion. Saute over
medium heat until the onion begins to brown.
(4) Add the beef broth, the soaked and drained beans,
the mashed potato flakes (or mashed potato) and
the parsley. Simmer for 21/2 hours, or until the
peas are tender.
(5) Add the remaining 75 g chopped onion, and the
minced garlic.
(6) In a tea ball, or tied in cheesecloth, put the bay
leaves, the peppercorns, and the cardamom seeds.
Simmer for another 1/2 hour.
(7) Remove the tea ball or cheesecloth. Add salt to
taste, being careful not to add more than 2 tea-
spoons.
(8) Pour in the cognac and the hot pepper oil, stir
well, and serve immediately. Sprinkle some
chopped fresh chives on top of each bowl after
serving it. If you don't have fresh chives, then
stir some dried snipped chives into the soup 5
minutes before serving it.
Some bacon is very salty. You can remove most of the salt
from it without materially affecting its flavor by boiling
the cut, uncooked bacon pieces for 1 minute in a few liters
of water, then discarding the water and then drying the
pieces with paper towels before cooking.
Because the cooked peas have the ability to block your taste
buds somewhat, make sure you rinse your mouth with a drink
of water after each time you taste the soup while seasoning
it, else you will overseason it. Incremental seasoning of
legume soups is tricky, so if you are inexperienced, measure
the seasonings carefully.
I like to serve soups like this with unbuttered fresh bread.
If you want to fool with the recipe, one of the places to
fool with it is the spices that you put in the tea ball. Try
some combination of Indian seasonings (coriander and cumin
and ginger and cloves) or try taking out the peppercorns and
cardamom seeds and putting in mustard seeds.
Outside the tea ball, try adding sesame oil at the end
instead of the cognac. Try adding rutabagas, chopped into
cubes, at the beginning of the cooking. Try substituting
olive oil for the butter, and adding a half cup of grated
Peccorino Romano at the end, right before serving. And, of
course, try using ham hocks instead of bacon.
Difficulty: easy to moderate (balancing the seasonings can
be tricky). Time: 6 hours soaking, 45 minutes preparation,
3 or more hours cooking. Precision: Measure the seasonings.
Brian Reid
DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif., USA
reid@decwrl.DEC.COM {ihnp4,ucbvax,decvax,sun,pyramid}!decwrl!reid
| Last modified: 9 May 2006 | 39 hits in May 2012 |
