peas – Gourmet Project

178. French Pea Soup – Potage-Saint-Germain p.96

I was really excited to try this soup. I went looking for a pea soup recipe in The Book, expecting to find a hearty split pea version with ham hocks, instead I got this spring vegetable centric Potage-Saint-Germain. It wasn’t really what I was looking for that night, and the idea of mint in my soup seemed a bit weird, but one ingredient captured my imagination and I knew I had to do this recipe ASAP. That ingredient was lettuce. I’ve been toying with the idea of cooked lettuce since I saw an early Julia Child episode where she braises whole Romaine heads and serves the flaccid results. It looked terrible but she assured me that it was an excellent treatment for lettuce. As we all know, Julia’s word is law, or at least worthy of a test. I’ve never cooked lettuce in any way before, I guess it’s not that different from cooking bitter greens, bok choy or cabbage, but it seems delightfully sacrilegious and just plain wrong.

To prepare this soup you start by making croÃ»tons with an old baguette, butter and salt in the oven. The soup starts with softening leaks in butter, then adding chicken stock and water. Once it’s boiling you add chopped Bibb lettuce, and frozen peas. As soon as the peas are tender you stir in fresh mint, and purÃ©e the soup in the blender (seriously be careful, hot pea soup was used as a viable substitute for napalm in the Nam). The soup is then seasoned with salt and pepper, and served hot topped with croÃ»tons and lightly beaten cream.

The idea with the beaten cream was to make elegant drops, and to run a knife through them to make a stunning pattern. You can see how well that worked out for me. I think my central problem with this soup was that it was served hot. The hot soup melted the slightly whipped cream and sent it running all over the place, and it just tasted weird. Minted things are rarely served piping hot, it’s an odd juxtaposition, mint is the universal symbol of cool and refreshing, but this was a thick, hearty, hot, soup. I tried some the next day at room temperature and I was much happier. The lettuce experiment was a success though, the lettuce along with peas, leaks, and mint were the prominent flavours in the soup, and the lettuce really worked. The Book describes the flavour of the lettuce in this soup as “grassy” and I’m glad they got in a food writing buzz word there, but really it tastes exactly like uncooked lettuce, and in this case that’s a good thing. Again, hot lettuce isn’t really for me, I much preferred that flavour when the soup was cool. I like croÃ»tons in any context, and this was no exception. The soup was thick enough that they floated easily, and didn’t get soggy.

I won’t be rushing to make this soup again, and if I did I certainly wouldn’t serve it warm. The flavours and ideas were pretty good, but the temperature was a big miss, and I wasn’t fond of the drizzled cream on top. I think the ideas behind this soup are solid, and I’m looking forward to playing with different combinations of these ingredients. Pottage-Saint-Germain is a beloved French classic, but I’m not sure it’s for me.

158. Perciatelli with Sausage RagÃ¹ and Meatballs p.222

I can’t find the recipe for this one online, but you can easily fake it. Last time I gave you the recipe for the life changingly good meatballs used in this recipe and they’re by far the most important part.

I mentioned that I’d be putting those meatballs up against one of the boys’ version of a Sicilian meatball. In the end we did have a meatball battle, but I have no time for looking backwards, so I chose a recipe from the book I hadn’t made yet as my contender. I went with Meatballs in Tomato Sauce, which were very traditional, and basic. There was some mention in the comments that currants, pine nuts, and sweet spices might not be appealing meatball ingredients to everyone, and the battle proved this out. I quite liked his take on the Sicilian meatball, and it was my pick for the battle winner. I’m not sure who won, or who actually voted, or whether anyone was keeping track, but my simple meatballs gathered their share of votes. The reasons given were mostly that people didn’t like some flavour in the Sicilian meatballs though. To each their own.

In this recipe the Sicilian meatballs, and sweet Italian sausages are browned in a large pot. The meat is removed and onions are softened in the remaining oil, then garlic is added and cooked for a couple of minutes. Red wine, a bay leaf, tomato paste and purÃ©e are added to the pot, and the meat is nestled back in. The ragÃ¹ is left to simmer for an hour and a half. Five minutes before serving, frozen green peas are stirred in. The meat is then removed, and some of the sauce is tossed with cooked perciatelli or ridged penne and served. The Book says that traditionally the pasta would be served as a first course, and the sausage and meatballs as a second, but in this recipe the meat is piled on the pasta and served.

I was quite pleased with the sauce, especially because it was infused with the flavours of the meatballs and sausages. The sauce was rich and wonderfully aromatic, and the red wine helped it surpass a standard spaghetti sauce. I like peas in pasta sauces, especially when the pasta’s shape lets them hide inside, and in such a deeply flavoured slow simmered dish their bright freshness was especially welcome. For all the goodness of the sauce, the highlight was really the meatballs, the sausages were entirely forgettable. I used bog standard grocery store Italian sausages, which are always fine, and sometimes pretty darn good, but maybe using a better quality product would have been worth it in this case. I wasn’t happy with the lewd appearance the sausages and meatballs gave the dish, and it’s hard to cut up a sausage when it’s sitting on a pile of pasta. If I used sausage again I’d definitely slice it ahead of time, and toss it with the pasta. I know I’ve said it enough at this point, but by far the best part of the recipe was the meatballs, and it was hard to care about any of the rest of it when they were on the plate.

I was altogether happy with this dish. I especially liked that the cinnamon from the meatballs perfused the tomato sauce. In Quebec cinnamon in spaghetti sauce is very very common, and I grew up on it. It doesn’t appear to be all that popular in the English speaking bits of North America, so I’m pleased to see that this winner of a flavour combination made it into The Book somewhere. Between making the meatballs and simmering the sauce this recipe takes forever, but it’s ideal for chilly days with pouring rain, or snowstorms. This ragÃ¹ was wonderfuly warming and comforting, if I’d been out skiing all day this is exactly the dish I’d want waiting for me when I got home.