I was sort of vaguely listening to the chatter of the hordelings from my lofty perch near the continental divide (the North-South one) when I heard discussions of food, and one word leapt out at me: peas. There is much conversation about peas in the comments here, so I assume you must all love them as much as I do. So I bought peas, many peas, and I had dried peas soaking overnight, and this morning I made pea soup by tossing in carrots and onions and oregano and garlic and a bit of salt and a few other secret ingredients, and I set it to simmer.
The peas are already creamy, and it’s at that delightful stage where the kitchen is rich with the smell of peas, and it’s wafting through the house warmly, tantalizing me. It’ll be ready for lunch. And dinner. And dinner tomorrow. It probably won’t make it to nine days, though. It will be gone.
Since it was all your idea, I thought I’d share. Don’t be jealous!
It does look divine.
I am inspired.
Oooh, looks tasty.
Secret ingredients? You mean you showed it a ham bone?
The plan is probably to put on a moon suit, rocket into the sun that foul liquid fumigating the house, and eat the pan, which should have surrendered by then.
Unfortunately, the concoction is not a cure for Ebola.
Even more unfortunately, it attracts horses.
SACRILEGE !!!
Mmm, peas. Mmm, soup. I made a tomato bisque last night that was quite heavenly. Sometimes simple food is the best.
I am for some reason terrified of making pea soup, because clearly it’s very hard.
So instead I make lentil soups.
Come to California. Visit Pea Soup Andersen’s. Enjoy.
Meet Derek Kitchen of the famous Kitchen v. Herbert case. This is a good background story.
Excerpt detailing the broader effect on gay-marriage laws:
It’s just so perfect that Kitchen’s story begins in Utah.
I love peas. People who dislike peas cannot be trusted. :)
Apparently I make bomb borscht. I love beets*. People don’t understand beets, just like they don’t understand peas.
*I typed “beats” in both places the first time because I need moar coffee.
One word: butterbeans. Season with a little ham, serve with cornbread (real cornbread, not the sweet kind). Ain’t hardly no better eatin’ in the whole world.
I actually second this — It’s the exception which proves the rule. My family used to live within a relatively short drive of the original location (Buellton), and tended to visit once-ish a year en route to a frequent vacation spot or other family members.
You can get the stuff in cans nowadays (or at least you could last time I was in USAlienstan), but I have no idea how it compares to the freshly-made original. Or, for that matter, whether the other locations which have since opened compare.
Shouldn’t that then be beat borscht, made with beat beets?
(Do the beets have a safeword?)
Split pea soup is one of my favorite things in the world. And Marilove does, indeed, make awesome borscht.
When I was in Scotland this summer, I had the greatest most awesome deliciousest pea soup ever in a restaurant in Edinburgh, Wildest Drams. I want to fly back just to have it again.
Georgia Sam @10
Butterbeans aka lima beans aka disgusting pieces of nauseating shit are edible in an emergency. If the choice is between butterbeans and starvation I supposed one could choke down some butterbeans but only if real food was completely and utterly unattainable for several weeks.
One of the meals provided in World War II to Vietnam era C-Rations was “ham and lima beans.” This entree was renamed by the troops: “ham and motherfuckers.”
All that needs is a hock, otherwise you’ve done Physio proud.
I like lima beans. They have a hardy texture. I suppose they need to be prepared right, and most importantly, seasoned correctly. So maybe you’ve just had badly made lima beans, Al Dente. I suspect that war-time “ham and lima beans” is perhaps not the best example.
Al Dente @15: Are butterbeans the same thing as lima beans where you come from? They’re very different things to me; butter beans are yellow, lima beans are green, and the butter beans are much larger.
*wikipedias, Googles a little* Huh. Varieties of the same species. Reasonable. Didn’t know.
But yeah, with a plate of either in front of me I’d definitely call them different things. And I’d eat multiple servings of either. Yum.
It has orange things in it. The green stuff is fine, but those orange things … nope, those are for eating raw. (or in cakes). It’s just exactly precisely like gremlins: raw (or in cakes), they’re a wonderful food; boiled, they’re an abomination.
How could you do that to a beautiful pea soup!?!?
From a True Believing Mormon commenting on the Salt Lake Tribune story referenced in comment #8:
And to wash that mormon nastiness out of your mind, here’s another excerpt from the Derek Kitchen story:
Compared to what normally passes for “food” in Scotland (albeit there are exceptions), you could eat the stone paving slabs (complete with a dog’s “business”) and it’d be the “greatest most awesome deliciousest”.
This is, of course, the real reason Scotland wanted free… The food is better than in Ingerland.
The Scottish do understand “water”, however…
Women who complain about sexual harassment on the job get fired:
Coverage of the second Ebola patient in Texas:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/10/12/3579111/ebola-texas-health-care-worker/
Lynna, Are you posting in the correct-ish thread? The Kitchen story is sort-of, vaguely, related to pea soup, but I’m at a loss for any connection to sexual harassment…?
http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2014/10/11/3579053/nj-football-hazing/
Trigger warning for sexual abuse.
Coverage of more awfulness hiding in football culture in the USA.
Or maybe The Beets just have a killer beat!
The Beets, Killer Tofu: http://www.youtube.com/embed/p7c3bQQmwVE
Not sure if I can embed videos into the comments?
People have, but peas don’t… It’s nasty for people who have slow or otherwise limited intertubes connection. Nothing wrong with a link (as you did do), however.
Lynna
Are you sure you’re in the right thread?
Here’s an addition to our Republicans-saying-stupid-stuff file:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/30/3574002/breaking-republican-judge-orders-obamacare-defunded/
I assume the peas have eaten Lynna’s brain and the remaining husk is just now posting on auto-pilot…
Oh shit. Yes, I am in the wrong thread. I’m going to take a walk, have more coffee, and then stay the hell off the internet until I wake up.
My apologies to everyone.
There are three vegetables I don’t eat: okra=slime; lima beans=chalk only chalk tastes better; bell peppers=bad childhood conditioning. All else is fair game. Pea soup is divine, especially if a wee dram of sherry is added to the bowl.
I have no peas in my house. I do have horses nearby.
Ahhh! Nothing speaks more of the goodness and wholesomeness of pea soup than this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-emQAsGMeQ
Gives a whole new meaning to facials……er, in the biblical sense of course.
I don’t have a garlic press (they’re hard to clean) so I have to chop it by hand or use a mini-food processor to turn it to liquid. How can I get the garlic small enough for food.
I do recommend going to a farmer’s market for garlic. It may cost more but it will last longer. Seems like the ones I get at the local megamart start growing in the first few days.
I make my own chicken stock too. I figure if we’re going to kill chickens for food the least we can do is use as much as we can. I save the bones from buffalo wings, freeze them and when I have enough I put them in my stock pot with some herbs, spices, and some veggie trimmings (mostly woody but not dry ends of asparagus, those white-ish green centers of celery, stems from hearty greens and parsley I have growing in a pot on my porch). It’s a long project but it’s worth it to control what goes into your stock which I use for many things.
Ah, so that is how the peas will dispose of the now-brainless husk…
Only water of life, please, thankyouverymuch.
Lots of languages call the local favourite distilled alcoholic beverage burning water or water of life (or “little water”). I only know a handful of relatively local examples, though – bet the Horde know lots of non Indo-European ones too?
I just chop up the garlic with a knife. Yes, I have no problems with medium-ish, or even large-ish, or larger, chunks of garlic. (Doesn’t scare the peas away, unfortunately.)
I also make my own chicken stock, but rarely add anything more than MUSHROOMS!, garlic (and/or shallots), and black pepper to the slowly-simmering carcass.
Dang, blf.
Give peas a chance.
Thanks for the tip, blf, about embeding. :)
::sigh::
PZ has turned to the Dark Side.
Peas are of teh eeeeeeeeeevil.
I love split pea soup, as does the spouse. We make it in a pressure cooker to cut down on the time needed to get that rich puree. If we have a leftover ham bone (rare, and only after a large party), that goes in and is heavenly. Vegetarian is almost as good. Mmmmm no matter how you look at it . . .
Way too many carrots. The proper amount is none.
@Alverant
You can always crush instead of mince. Peel garlic clove, place on cutting board, take a large knife and lay the blade flat over top, bring the palm of your hand down (carefully) with great force onto the blade (I said carefully right?). Voila. You should have a mash that will break up in a stew/soup/sauce.
That pea soup looks delicious. I wish I could eat something like that but I have to be careful about what legumes I put into my mouth.
I already found out the hard way that I can’t eat split peas and I’m not sure how many other kinds of peas are likely to have the same effect. :(
Wot, you slice your carrots? They should be whole, to slink around like evil submarines in a pea soup harbor. Better still, a whole pie.
So I guess your new name is Peas Z Myers. Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk! Ho! Ho! Ho! He! He! He! Ha! Ha! Ha! Oops! I pea’d my pants! Get it I pea’d instead of pee’d! Hahahahahaha…….times infinity! But seriously I think I did pee my pants.
Alverant,
I learned from watching Rachael Ray that one of those hand-held microplane graters are wonderful for grating garlic into food. I also use it got grate onions into meatloaf mixture o into hamburger meat for that lovely flavor of the onion and juice without the big chunks.
The hand-held graters are available at any kitchen store, such as Bed, Bath & Beyond.
Man, I hate typing on my tablet!
Oh, and cooked carrots are devilspawn.
Raw ones however, are lovely.
****
Jake Harban @46:
Legume allergy?
Peas should be marrowfatted and/or mushy, not souped, and those baby carrot U-boats look like they were vomited forth from a tin. However the onion and parsnip soup I have simmering away in the kitchen right now is of the [non-existent] gods. I may even indulge myself and dribble a spoonful of honey (plus more black pepper) into it before it’s finished.
Oh and pea soup suffers from cold fusion.
What, Fails to emit deadly radiation, or Attracts nutters?
More ways than one?
magistramarla @49
Grating garlic and onions is the easiest way to get them into stews and soups.
No, no, no – not sure what you’re cooking, but that is definitely not snert as it was bestowed upon us by the gods. Leave this one to the Dutch, will you? The added carrot is blasphemous, besides vegetables in any good pea soup should never be recognizable as such. I also spot vital ingredients missing. There should definitely be copious amounts of greasy meat (pork sausage, ham and rib) bobbing near the surface, and you’re supposed to have a slice of dark rye bread with a bacon slice on the side (pigs certainly did draw the short straw on pea soup). It should also be difficult to stir, and it should be hard to stop the spoon once it has momentum. The whole thing should look like it has been recently thrown up by an omnivorous animal three times your size.
And it’s WAY too early to be eating snert – you’re not supposed to do so unless you’ve spent half a day trying to ice-skate on a frozen ditch, alone in the fields, while a frosty wind was piercing your face with snowflakes, and your ears, fingers and toes have all gone numb. That’s when it’s at its best. Assuming you can still hold the spoon.
Lofty @53:
Only if you keep creationists in charge of dinner.
I thought numb hands was why snert held the spoon for you…
@blf: I wouldn’t let go. It sometimes eats the spoon whole.
Of course it eats the spoon. It’s peas!
Whatdidya expect, paintings of sunflowers in southern France?
Well the slightly discomforting thing is that it’s the only dish that burps after eating a spoon.
Compute error: van Gogh reference caught but not understood.
I may be misrecalling, but wasn’t van Gogh Dutch? Like snert. All slightly strange, in a fascinating way.
Tony! I knew I liked you already. And now I see that also, too, as well, we are on the same side wrt the Great Carrot Question! O what can be so sweet and crunchy as a fresh young carrot, peeled and immediately nommed? (psst – the schismatic exception – grated, in carrot cake – yes/no?)
Indeed he was, but I guess I was looking for too much behind the comment. He and snert only share common ancestry.
Strange and fascinating is certainly befitting snert although some people I know would add ‘suspicious’.
Oh yes, a hambone needs to go in pea soup while simmering, even if there’s no meat contribution from it. I prefer to grate the carrots into it, and then once it’s almost done take about half of the soup and puree it, then return it to the pot. And at the end, it needs a small grating of fresh nutmeg stirred in. Ahhh…lovely.
@Ibis and magistramarla
I have one of those pan scrapers that works much better than a knife. It’s bigger and no edge plus the handle is positioned so that you can lay it flush on the ground (ie the handle isn’t centered). I can put my weight into crushing the cloves and remove the paper afterwards. But I have to do it one at a time. The problem is getting all the paper and finding the stems to cut off. A micrograter may help, but I do 5 or 6 cloves at once (when I make things it’s usually for several meals) but I imagine it would be harder to work with half-crushed cloves. But I’ll keep my eye out for on of them to see if it might help. Thanks.
The only problem with microplane graters with regard to garlic is getting the garlic flavor out before using your grater on lemon peels to make curd. Personally I mince: a whack to skin it and thirty seconds’ hard chopping – more like a rocking motion really.
I love split-pea soup but abominate fresh cooked peas; raw, off the vine, if young enough, is delicious.
In a hearty bean soup, sliced cabbage, which becomes nearly undetectable with cooking, is nice, though bean soup with cabbage is probably not for those who object to farting.
Long-cooked in vegetable soup, fresh limas or edamame take on a texture rather like potatoes. I also like to supplement the potato in pot-pies with some cubed turnip, which becomes less turnipy with cooking in the broth and just adds to the flavor of the gravy.
Due to a slightly sticky “a” key I originally typed “potto in pot pies”. I do not put potto in my pot pies.
My pea soup turned out rather well.
… Nutmeg… Carrot… I just… Ugh.
All of this could have been avoided if we hadn’t lost Manhattan to the British.
*gesture of aversion*
Yup, that certainly does look diagnostic of diabolical possession.
–
My favourite way to do garlic is to roast an entire bulb or two of the stuff with a touch of olive oil. After that the cloves are easily mashed with a fork(add the now garlic-flavoured oil it was roasted with!) and you can keep it in a little tub in the fridge to add to dishes as required. It’s pretty good as it is on toast, too. Mmmm.
Al Dente @15:
Ah yes, ham & lima bean C-Rations. I remember them well. They weren’t my favorite, but they were OK. Some of my buddies hated them so much that they would trade me their ham & lima beans plus whatever sweets they had for any other kind of C-Ration “main course.” I got a lot of canned fruit that way.
Roast whole bulbs of garlic in a slow oven.
When they’re done, snip the tops off individual clove and squeeze the garlicmash onto a cracker.
Enjoy.
*important*
Everyone in your group must eat of the garlic.
That way you all stink together.
Outsiders can suck it up.
Lima beans…shudder.
That’s another one I never enjoyed as a child. My parents would often pair lima beans with meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I’d try to mask the taste and texture of the lima beans with the meatloaf and masher, but it never worked.
blf
Precisely. Haven’t you seen how cold pea soup absorbs all incident enthusiasm? I swear you could entomb Chernobyl in the stuff without risk, that’s if you can figure how to chisel it out of its pot.
You can puree peeled garlic on a plastic card with raised bits – I bought one a few years back which has little lumps all over it, which is a bit quicker, but the inventor of it claimed he started out by using the impressed letters/numbers on a credit card. The important thing for cleaning is to not let it dry, but put a small squirt of washing up liquid on it and then rub it between your fingers under warm running water once you’ve wiped the garlic off into your pan. Absolutely no lumps of garlic and even more flavour gets into the food.
I love comment threads about food, no matter how I feel about the food or people’s preferences! More food threads, please.
I was with friends in a Greek resto when someone ordered skordalia. The server asked ‘Does everyone want skordalia? Nobody gets it unless everyone wants it’
Garlic:
place clove(s) on cutting board
place flat of broad kitchen knife over garlic and whack with palm
remove covering paper
cut off end “nib”
sprinkle with a pinch of kosher salt
use flat of kitchen knife and with repeated pressing/pushing motions crush garlic into paste
the more processed the garlic the stronger the flavor, ie sliced = mild, crushed = pronounced, paste=strong
P.S. roasted garlic (though delicious) does not imbue the same flavor as raw