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Split pea soup
Mar. 22nd, 2006 03:25 pmI hate to admit it, but I've not really been all that productive today. I've got a presentation to work up for my Medieval Occitan class tomorrow, a thesis to format, about 7000 lines of an Occitan roman to read (for Apr6, but still, it's not exactly fast going), various businessy emails to write and phone calls to make, the English Department of Indiana University to harass, and -- oh yes -- about 2.5 months of ass'tship work to catch up on since I've been ignoring that in favor of my thesis since December.
So I made soup.
See, last time I was Whole Foods, I took a spin down their grains/beans/nuts/other-shit-that-works-well-in-bins aisle, as I commonly do, with no particular purpose in mind. I go down the aisle to see where inspiration will strike me. I nearly bought Anasazi beans, but instead I went with the split peas, remembering the delicious split pea soup I'd eaten at the Sampietros' on New Year's Eve. So they've been languishing in my cabinet for a while, as I went through periods of either not feeling in a split pea soup mood or not having appropriate ingredients on hand (which if you know how to make split pea soup, you know that should be a joke given the very basic nature of the beast, but it's not). Today I finally made the soup. First, a little bit of food art:
and a bit of food porn:
In the first picture, I had some leftover cream that I tossed into the pot more to use it up than anything else (not really enough cream compared to soup volume to do much to the flavor/texture of the finished product). Don't the spatters and dots look lovely? As for the second picture, well, there you go. Split pea soup with parmesan cheese and freshly ground black pepper.
Thoughts/comments/notes to myself: I ended up making the soup vegetarian, since I had open vegetable broth in the fridge from a cheese sauce I made a little bit back, and I didn't have a ham hock. Not bad veggie, but I really think the ham hock would have added a lot of flavor -- pork products like legumes almost as much as I like pork products. Also, I went a bit overboard with the carrots. In my opinion, split pea soup needs some carrots. It does not, however, need four carrots to go with a little over half a pound of peas, that's just madness. More like 1-2 carrots would have been better, would have let the peas come through more, and wouldn't have changed the soup color from a rich green to a somewhat myconial orange-green. Lastly, I need to get a microplane grater and a block of good parmigiano reggiano. That stuff I used? DiGiorno's shredded parmesan. [Note: not parm.regg., but parmesan]. I know it's something that we food types aren't supposed to say, but I think I would have preferred the green canister over the DiGiorno product; the shredded parm was kinda... rubbery. I adore real parm.regg., with its buttery, nutty complexity, and this clinches it: I'm through with this fake stuff.
Regardless, the soup turned out very nicely, and thank god for that, since I've got a lot of it left! Mm, and the pepper and the peas work well together: I could taste more of the cherry notes of the fresh pepper than I usually can.
So I made soup.
See, last time I was Whole Foods, I took a spin down their grains/beans/nuts/other-shit-that-works-well-in-bins aisle, as I commonly do, with no particular purpose in mind. I go down the aisle to see where inspiration will strike me. I nearly bought Anasazi beans, but instead I went with the split peas, remembering the delicious split pea soup I'd eaten at the Sampietros' on New Year's Eve. So they've been languishing in my cabinet for a while, as I went through periods of either not feeling in a split pea soup mood or not having appropriate ingredients on hand (which if you know how to make split pea soup, you know that should be a joke given the very basic nature of the beast, but it's not). Today I finally made the soup. First, a little bit of food art:
and a bit of food porn:
In the first picture, I had some leftover cream that I tossed into the pot more to use it up than anything else (not really enough cream compared to soup volume to do much to the flavor/texture of the finished product). Don't the spatters and dots look lovely? As for the second picture, well, there you go. Split pea soup with parmesan cheese and freshly ground black pepper.
Thoughts/comments/notes to myself: I ended up making the soup vegetarian, since I had open vegetable broth in the fridge from a cheese sauce I made a little bit back, and I didn't have a ham hock. Not bad veggie, but I really think the ham hock would have added a lot of flavor -- pork products like legumes almost as much as I like pork products. Also, I went a bit overboard with the carrots. In my opinion, split pea soup needs some carrots. It does not, however, need four carrots to go with a little over half a pound of peas, that's just madness. More like 1-2 carrots would have been better, would have let the peas come through more, and wouldn't have changed the soup color from a rich green to a somewhat myconial orange-green. Lastly, I need to get a microplane grater and a block of good parmigiano reggiano. That stuff I used? DiGiorno's shredded parmesan. [Note: not parm.regg., but parmesan]. I know it's something that we food types aren't supposed to say, but I think I would have preferred the green canister over the DiGiorno product; the shredded parm was kinda... rubbery. I adore real parm.regg., with its buttery, nutty complexity, and this clinches it: I'm through with this fake stuff.
Regardless, the soup turned out very nicely, and thank god for that, since I've got a lot of it left! Mm, and the pepper and the peas work well together: I could taste more of the cherry notes of the fresh pepper than I usually can.
