Pea Soup - with Smoked Haddock

Pea soup is something very familiar to me – I have made more then my share of huge pots of this lovely soup over the years – and all of them good in their own way.

It is also such an easy meal to make – basic in fact – but so ancient, wholesome and worthy of making again and again, especially during cold winter days. This is indeed a welcome meal at the end of the week.

Where I come from, in Newfoundland, this type of meal would have been made at the weekends, with salted beef usually and then some lovely dumplings cooked into the bubbling pot when the soup was ready to serve.

Of course my own recipe is a little different (go figure) because I don’t eat beef – but I have since discovered, there are so many other ways to make this dish. One of my favourite being with smoked fish of some kind.

I like it with a nice smoked haddock, but it can be made with anything you have on hand such as smoked salmon, smoked trout, or even oysters. The smoky flavour goes so well with the earthy flavour of the yellow split peas.

Perhaps, like nothing else.

To make pea soup first you need to soak your peas overnight in plenty of water. Then in the morning, place them on a slow boil in a large pot of water with a couple pieces of seaweed. I will use about 2 cups of peas for a 2 litre pot that is less then half full of water.

Next, once this is cooking start adding some ingredients – nearly anything will do. I like to add lots of carrots, turnip, sautéd onions, garlic, a sweet potato, a little celery, fennel, leek – what ever is around can go in the pot.

Then I add a heaping teaspoon each of cumin, turmeric, coriander – salt and pepper to taste and a little allspice or nutmeg. I have been known to also put in some (not much) celery seed, caraway, fennel and so forth as well. Just to give some rich flavours that go well with the peas.

In the meantime, this all cooks away in the pot until the peas become soft and the mixture starts to look creamy and soupy. On a low heat, cooking gently like this it could take up to 4 hours to get this desired consistency.

Once you have your soup ready – take off the heat and blend a little to mostly smooth out the peas, but with a few veggies still intact. Then add your boned, cooked smoked haddock.

Allow this to now sit in the very hot soup for more then an hour – actually this tastes far better the next day – and will be good even a few days later if kept in the fridge.

This soup is lovely served with any bread but we do like Socca or Rosemary Sea salt spelt bread to dip into this rich and tasty meal.

April

Pea soup - ready for haddock!

Fritters - Yellow Split Peas

So, remember all those yellow split peas we all have sitting in our cupboards? Well, I have the recipe for at least some of them...these look, smell and apparently taste very good - if the children eating them all in one go is any indication! 

They were also very easy to make (and quick) which is also a bonus. The only thing is I would recommend you soak the peas at least overnight because anything soaked for awhile is more digestible and we all want to go easy on our hard working guts.

I soaked a bowl full of peas overnight in cold water - adding more water as it was soaked up by the peas. Then today I took about 2 cups of the peas and ground them in the food processor even though these are often made with dry peas.

Once ground, I put the pea mixture into a separate bowl and added finely chopped onion, garlic and fresh parsley. Next I added a generous teaspoon (or a bit more) of ground cumin, a little salt and pepper and some coconut flakes (in place of oil).

This was all mixed thoroughly - but here is where I did something a little different. Instead of frying them in hot oil I dropped tablespoonfuls onto a parchment covered baking pan and placed them into a hot oven (about 180C).

Once they were in the oven for about 10 minutes I lightly brushed some olive oil over top of each fritter and put them back in for another 10 minutes or so, until starting to brown on top and very fragrant. Then out they came....

I don't think they even had a chance to cool down - they were gone! 

April

Yellow Split Pea Fritters

Same Old, Same Old in Our Cooking

Do you have things - boxes, packets, jars of foodie stuff in your cupboards that you never get around to using up? Do you find yourself stuck in a rut making the same things again and again using the same ingredients?

What's with that? I mean, we are interested in these foods, we even like them - yet there they sit, day after day and we somehow pass them by for the same old, same old. I mention to people all the time - our diets must have variety in order to be balanced.

Yet - when we take in a narrow range of foods or even a wide range of the same types of foods - day after day, we tend to limit our digestive and absorptive capabilities in our guts. I have seen instances where entire pathways shutdown from lack of use.

With this in mind (and because I am detoxing, therefore looking for things to keep me busy!) I have been going through some of these foods that we enjoy but do not use often enough. One of these is the yellow split pea.

Years ago this was a more common staple in my diet - coming from Canada's east coast, it was used to make pea soups, peas puddings etc. I also used to make a lovely dal with them when I was vegan - but alas, time has flown by and I have let this lovely pea slip from my diet except very occasionally.

So this week I am going through each cupboard to see exactly what it is I have - and have not been using enough of. There are so many interesting things to be making - cooking - trying out with the ingredients I have on hand....

So why not! Hopefully some more adventurous dishes, recipes and cooking will arrive on these pages in the coming days....

April

Our full moon on 24 February