Once More With Feeling
Nov. 23rd, 2007 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quisletI didn't bother to post this one, a few weeks ago, as I was busy cranking out a term paper. But it's time to dig into our #1 family comfort food again. Last month, I made about 3 gallons of split pea soup (my way) and froze most of it. It's already all gone. Time to start again.
Split pea is something of a family legend where I grew up. This is because my uncle hates two foods: peas & watermelon. At the same time, his favorite food in the entire world is split pea soup, but only because my grandmother cleverly renamed it "ham soup." I guess he never questioned why ham soup is green. Maybe it was a Dr. Seuss thing. At any rate, this story was told at the dinner table in my house every time we served split pea soup. We didn't keep the "ham" name because there was no need for subterfuge when feeding us split pea.
Once I had started my own household, some dear friends taught us a recipe that incorporated loads of other vegetables into split pea. They lived on Euclid Street in San Francisco when they came up with the recipe, thus it carries the name "Split Pea Euclid." As a fan of Greek mathematics, I kept that name. When I later did a stint as a short order cook, I learned that Italian minestrone was originally made from a split pea base. Thus I suppose you could also call this old school Italian food.
The pot of soup-to-be on my stove is made from a very simple recipe. Get your biggest pot, heat it up really good, put some oil in it (something with a high smoke point, like canola) and then throw in some onions & garlic. In my case, I'm making a triple recipe, so it's two onions and half a head of garlic.
Next goes in the ham. If you're vegetarian, halal or kosher, I'd recommend skipping this step. In my case, I'm a carnivorous infidel goy, so about two pounds of country ham went into my pot. I sure love those Smithfield folks. They make my favorite pig parts so accessible! Sliced ham hocks with lots of meat, bite-sized nuggets of country ham, yum!
Stir that all around, let it get a little brown. Crusty bits taste better than non-crusty bits. It's that Maillard reaction, caramelizing the sugars & denaturing proteins, creating yumminess that wouldn't be there otherwise. When you're happy with how it looks, throw in your peas. I like to mix yellow and green split peas, just because I can. Add the water (18 oz in my case, but you can just follow the recipe on the bag of peas, loosely).
To the water, I add whatever vegetables are handy. Today, it was one small zucchini, one small yellow squash, a basket of sliced mushrooms, a bag of carrot/cauliflower/broccoli bits and one bag of spinach. Oh yeah, and I like to put bay leaf & peppercorns in a tea infuser to make them easy to fish out later.
Let that all boil, then simmer for an hour or so. Fish out your meat, debone and chop it into bite-size pieces, if necessary. Fish out the infuser and dump the spices, they've done their part already. Then I use my spider strainer to fish out all the veggies and dump them into my obnoxiously overpowered two horsepower blender and blitz the crap out of them. Dump the puree back into the pot and keep doing this in batches with all of the veggies. Return your meat to the pot, and you should have a couple gallons of rich, nutritious Split Pea Euclid. I prefer to serve mine with sourdough toast, fresh ground pepper, Tabasco and sometimes fresh-grated parmesan. Put the rest into quart-sized freezer bags, lay out on a baking sheet, and freeze to make nice bricks of luscious, green dinner-for-two.
I feel so prolific! Can you tell I'm on break from school? :-)
Split pea is something of a family legend where I grew up. This is because my uncle hates two foods: peas & watermelon. At the same time, his favorite food in the entire world is split pea soup, but only because my grandmother cleverly renamed it "ham soup." I guess he never questioned why ham soup is green. Maybe it was a Dr. Seuss thing. At any rate, this story was told at the dinner table in my house every time we served split pea soup. We didn't keep the "ham" name because there was no need for subterfuge when feeding us split pea.
Once I had started my own household, some dear friends taught us a recipe that incorporated loads of other vegetables into split pea. They lived on Euclid Street in San Francisco when they came up with the recipe, thus it carries the name "Split Pea Euclid." As a fan of Greek mathematics, I kept that name. When I later did a stint as a short order cook, I learned that Italian minestrone was originally made from a split pea base. Thus I suppose you could also call this old school Italian food.
The pot of soup-to-be on my stove is made from a very simple recipe. Get your biggest pot, heat it up really good, put some oil in it (something with a high smoke point, like canola) and then throw in some onions & garlic. In my case, I'm making a triple recipe, so it's two onions and half a head of garlic.
Next goes in the ham. If you're vegetarian, halal or kosher, I'd recommend skipping this step. In my case, I'm a carnivorous infidel goy, so about two pounds of country ham went into my pot. I sure love those Smithfield folks. They make my favorite pig parts so accessible! Sliced ham hocks with lots of meat, bite-sized nuggets of country ham, yum!
Stir that all around, let it get a little brown. Crusty bits taste better than non-crusty bits. It's that Maillard reaction, caramelizing the sugars & denaturing proteins, creating yumminess that wouldn't be there otherwise. When you're happy with how it looks, throw in your peas. I like to mix yellow and green split peas, just because I can. Add the water (18 oz in my case, but you can just follow the recipe on the bag of peas, loosely).
To the water, I add whatever vegetables are handy. Today, it was one small zucchini, one small yellow squash, a basket of sliced mushrooms, a bag of carrot/cauliflower/broccoli bits and one bag of spinach. Oh yeah, and I like to put bay leaf & peppercorns in a tea infuser to make them easy to fish out later.
Let that all boil, then simmer for an hour or so. Fish out your meat, debone and chop it into bite-size pieces, if necessary. Fish out the infuser and dump the spices, they've done their part already. Then I use my spider strainer to fish out all the veggies and dump them into my obnoxiously overpowered two horsepower blender and blitz the crap out of them. Dump the puree back into the pot and keep doing this in batches with all of the veggies. Return your meat to the pot, and you should have a couple gallons of rich, nutritious Split Pea Euclid. I prefer to serve mine with sourdough toast, fresh ground pepper, Tabasco and sometimes fresh-grated parmesan. Put the rest into quart-sized freezer bags, lay out on a baking sheet, and freeze to make nice bricks of luscious, green dinner-for-two.
I feel so prolific! Can you tell I'm on break from school? :-)
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cookery geekery
Date: 2007-11-24 12:37 am (UTC)soup sounds good i've got some oxtail that will shortly be beef and barley mmmmmm
Re: cookery geekery
Date: 2007-11-24 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-24 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-24 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-24 04:11 am (UTC)Hugs, love and kisses,
Louis