Because E is vegetarian, decided to forgo the ham bone and headed to my reliable old Moosewood Cookbook. Nice recipe, but looked a little dull. So to the web, where I found Haverchuck’s variation on the Moosewood recipe. Looked pretty good to me. Got me thinking about Indian food and Indian spices. So back to Google, which led me to Moosewood’s African Split-Pea and Rice Soup (Thanks, Jan Gordon, whoever you are). Now, that’s the kind of spice I was looking for. But P had already bought a nice baguette at Gourmet Garage, so the rice was out. Plus, I had only 2 cups of split peas and one sweet potato that somehow got overlooked when I was making mashed sweets for Thanksgiving. So, I got creative and melded all three recipes plus a little more. Here’s what I did:
Rinse 2 cups dried split peas and place into Dutch oven with 6 cups cold water and 1 tsp salt. Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, for 20-30 minutes.
Meanwhile, chop up 2 stalks celery, 2 medium carrots and 1 sweet potato. Add to the soup and simmer gently another 40 minutes with occasional stirring. Add water if necessary.
Meanwhile, mince 3 onions and 3 cloves garlic. Saute in 1 tbsp butter till onions are transcluscent. Add 2 bay leaves, 3/4 tsp cardomon, 3/4 tsp cinammon, 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin, 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper and 1 tsp salt. Cook, stirring to prevent burning, for 5 minutes. About half way through, add 1/4 cup white wine and continue cooking till onions are wonderful. (Keep your fingers out – no tasting!) Add onion mixture to the soup and cook a little longer till peas are soft and the soup is done.
Now here’s where I screwed up. Per Haverchuck’s suggestion, I pureed the soup (well, part of it). I immedately regretted my decision. I forgot that pea soup, when pureed, looks like, well…. meconium, if you really want to know. (Guess what I do for a living….more on that another time). Way too thick and it dries on the edges of the bowl and looks like green glue. So I stopped there and put the pureed soup back in with the rest of the soup (which in retrosepect I now know looked and tasted just fine). Next time, I won’t puree. The soup was gorgeous just as it was.
Season with salt and pepper. If you want, cook up some extra onions and spices and instead of adding them to the soup, crisp them up and put on top as a garnish. (I tried this, but accidentally burnt the onions.)
I ended up serving it with toasted baguette slices (drizzled with olive oil) and a nice green salad. I like this salad from Epicurious. The dressing is perfect. I used goat cheese instead of gorgonzola, and also added some pears and spiced pecans.