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- Path: decwrl!recipes
- From: reid@glacier (Brian Reid)
- Newsgroups: mod.recipes
- Subject: RECIPE: Pea soup with bacon
- Message-ID: <5987@decwrl.DEC.COM>
- Date: 17 Oct 86 03:34:25 GMT
- Sender: recipes@decwrl.DEC.COM
- Organization: Stanford University, Computer Systems Lab
- Lines: 107
- Approved: reid@glacier.ARPA
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-
- .RH MOD.RECIPES-SOURCE PEA-SOUP-1 SP "20 Jan 86" 1986
- .RZ "SPLIT PEA SOUP" "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.
- .IH "Makes 16 cups" "Makes 4 liters"
- .IG "1 lb" "split peas" "500 g"
- .IG "1 lb" "bacon," "500 g"
- chopped into small squares
- .IG "4 oz" "butter" "100 g"
- .IG "2" "celery stalks"
- .IG "1\(12 cup" "yellow onion" "65 g"
- (chopped)
- .IG "1 cup" "instant mashed potato flakes" "250 ml"
- (or, if you are a purist,
- .AB "2 cups" "500 ml"
- of mashed potatoes)
- .IG "3" "minced garlic cloves"
- .IG "\(12 cups" "parsley" "20 g"
- (fresh, chopped)
- .IG "12 cups" "beef broth" "3 l"
- (or any other kind of broth, or water)
- .IG "1" "bay leaf"
- .IG "12" "peppercorns"
- (cracked)
- .IG "6" "green cardamom seeds"
- (cracked)
- .IG "1 jigger" "good cognac" "30 ml"
- .IG "\(12 tsp" "Chinese hot pepper oil" "2.5 ml"
- .PH
- .SK 1
- Soak the peas for 6 hours and no more. Use
- .AB "1 teaspoon" "5 ml"
- salt per quart of soaking water. Drain; discard the soaking water.
- .SK 2
- Cook the bacon until crisp; drain, dry, and discard 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
- .TE 400 200 .
- .SK 3
- In a stockpot, put the cooked bacon, the butter, the celery, and
- .AB "1 cup" "150 g"
- of the onion. Saut\z\(aae over medium heat until the onion begins to brown.
- .SK 4
- Add the beef broth, the soaked and drained beans, the mashed potato flakes
- (or mashed potato) and the parsley. Simmer for 2\(12 hours, or until the
- peas are tender.
- .SK 5
- Add the remaining
- .AB "\(12 cup" "75 g"
- chopped onion, and the minced garlic.
- .SK 6
- In a tea ball, or tied in cheesecloth, put the bay leaves, the peppercorns,
- and the cardamom seeds. Simmer for another \(12 hour.
- .SK 7
- Remove the tea ball or cheesecloth. Add salt to taste, being careful not to
- add more than 2 teaspoons.
- .SK 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.
- .NX
- 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
- .AB "quarts" "liters"
- of water, then discarding the water and then
- drying the pieces with paper towels before cooking.
- .PP
- 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.
- .PP
- I like to serve soups like this with unbuttered fresh bread.
- .PP
- 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.
- .PP
- 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.
- .SH RATING
- .I Difficulty:
- easy to moderate (balancing the seasonings can be tricky).
- .I Time:
- 6 hours soaking, 45 minutes preparation, 3 or more hours cooking.
- .I Precision:
- Measure the seasonings.
- .WR
- Brian Reid
- DEC Western Research Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif., USA
- reid@decwrl.DEC.COM {ihnp4,ucbvax,decvax,sun,pyramid}!decwrl!reid
-