Starting the split peas (November ninety, day 12)

After quailing at the task of making 2 kg of yellow dried split peas taste delicious, I have made a pretty good start and am quite pleased with the results so far.

I soaked about 500g/just over 1lb dried split peas yesterday for a few hours then heated them up to boiling point for a few minutes before following my now routine method for cooking this kind of thing – i.e. putting on a lid, turning off the heat and leaving them to soften using the residual heat. After fifty minutes they were stil quite firm, but I correctly assumed that since they’d either be heated up again, or blended, they were done enough.

I also processed the remains of the first butternut squash as it had been cut open for a few days and I didn’t know how much longer it would last. That was simply cut into slices then peeled with a potato peeler, cut into cubes and added to a pan of sautéed onion with a splash of water and some bouillon powder. I thought this could be used in a few different ways, including maybe a savoury pumpkin-pie-type-thing. 

Today’s lunch has been an amalgamation of both of these components. I fried up another onion with a couple of teaspoons of punch pooran spice mix, added half the cooked split peas, water just to cover then brought to the boil with a stock cube. I put my last remaining can of tomatoes in the blender, along with the final red chilli, a clove of garlic, some ginger powder, then I added about 1/3 cup peanuts and half the split-pea mixture, whizzed it all up (had to add some water), returned to the pan, added some diced potatoes, brought back up to simmering point and cooked until the potatoes were done. I didn’t want to add all the squash mix to the soup mix, because there was a large amount of each, and added together would probably be six or more servings, which would get boring after a while, so I just heated up a ladleful of squash mix with a bit of water in a small pan, then added a ladleful of soup to that once the potatoes were done. Garnished with fresh mint from the garden and with some toast on the side, this was a very satisfying and tasty lunch. So, the secret to cooking with split peas seems to be just throw a bunch of highly-flavoured stuff into the pot and keep going until it masks the pea taste! 😉

Spend for the month now stands at £32.46, as I bought a lemon for 25p at the market earlier today. I plan to use this with the rest of the split peas and the last cloves of garlic to make hummus-alike.

 

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