Yeah, I said celery – you got a problem with that? If so, you’re just wrong, wrong, wrong, but in all fairness, it might not be all your fault. Answer me this – is the celery you’re familiar with what you get from the supermarket? Do you actually check out what you buy before you buy it? Ever grown your own or got celery from good local CSA or framers market? If you answered YES, NO, NO, NO, then you gotta up your game. Let’s run down that list.
Just look at that stuff in the image above – it’s kind of a shitty picture, but even so, does that look good to you? Look fresh, appealing? No, it doesn’t, and again, if this is what you’re buying, no wonder you dis celery.
If you do buy supermarket celery, do you check it out first? I can’t tell you how many times somebody sees me choosing produce and asks, ‘what are you doing?’ Bloody hell – I’m making sure that what I buy is worth my money! Grab a leaf off that celery stalk, crush it and smell it – does it smell good? Greenish, sharp, a bit peppery? Bend a stalk or three- are they like rubber, or are they firm and resist being bent? If you answer NO and NO, don’t buy it.
Finally, if you’ve never grown your own or bought fresh local celery, then frankly, you got no idea what good celery is – and good celery is well worth your time and energy.
Why is celery worth your while? It’s healthy as all get out for starters – high in fiber, loaded with antioxidants, and high in phthalides which can help regulate blood pressure, and its even got extracts onboard that help cognition and memory.
Yes, good, fresh celery tastes excellent as well – it’s related to carrots and turnips, and has a light but very present flavor profile, a peppery, earthy tang with nods to onion or garlic chive. To me, the flavor is most pronounced in the leaves, which is why I use them a lot – added to hot or cold salad, soup, stew, stir fries, vegetable medleys, pan sauces and salsas, they’re delightful.
We grow celery annually, and it’s always the last to succumb to freezing weather – Our go to is Tall Utah, (what you see in the image above), a hearty and stringless variety with great taste and big leaves that lend themselves beautifully to fresh use and drying.
Giant Red is a cold hearty and gorgeous variety with arguably the strongest flavor profile you’re likely to find – it’s a fave in England, and should be here too – it’s delightful stuff.
Nan Long is a leafy, Chinese variety that produces delicate, thin stalks and pairs wonderfully with Asian cuisines. It’s a quick maturing variety that thrives in climates with a short summer growing season.
Finally there’s celeriac, a variety grown for its hypocotyl -a big, robust rootlike growth. Celeriac is far more popular in Europe than the U.S., which is a shame, because it’s delicious, hearty, and easier to grow than stalk celery. Celeriac is sewn after the last frost and harvested in fall to winter – it stores well, and can be frozen or dried as well. Celeriac tastes like, well… like celery, but with a distinctly nuttier note, stronger presence, and a fantastic crunchy texture.
Whatever you decide to grow or hunt and gather, once you’ve tasted real, fresh celery, you’ll never willingly go back to store bought tubular cardboard – You’ll find celery taking its rightful place alongside all the other veggies you love and eat regularly. As for what to make, I’ll just say this – You’ll find a myriad of things to do with it, and don’t be at all surprised if fresh, braised, sautéed, or roasted celery finds its way into your routine – it’s that good – no, honest!
When you make soup, or stew, or any number of sauces at home, you add a bay leaf or two, right? Ever wonder why you do that – I mean, really give it some thought? I’ll be honest – I hadn’t, so I guess it’s time to ask – What does bay leaf do for our cooking, anyway?
Full disclosure, a social media acquaintance sent me a link to a new-agey treatise on bay leaf. This thing claimed that, ‘recent scientific studies have proven’ that bay leaf converted triglycerides to monounsaturated fats, eliminates heartburn, acidity, and constipation, regulates bowel movements and blood sugar, makes the human body produce insulin, eliminates bad cholesterol, protects the heart from seizures and strokes, relieves insomnia, anxiety, kidney stones and cures infections – No freakin’ wonder we put them in soup!
Most if not all of those claims are, at best, gross exaggeration and distortion of facts. The real dead giveaway was this line – ‘Do you know that if you boil some bay leaves in a glass of water and taste it, it will have no flavor?’
My answer to that is, ‘do you know that this statement is complete bullshit?’ Either the author has never actually done the experiment, or did so with bad bay leaves. Had they done it properly, they’d have discovered a much more potent and nuanced result.
Before we dive into that, let’s define what exactly the bay leaf in our pantry is – it’s Sweet Bay, AKA Bay Laurel, or Lauris nobilis. It’s native to the Mediterranean, and cultivated commercially all around that region, as well as France, Spain, Mexico, and Portugal. Now for the record, the other bay we see in a lot of pantries is California Bay, and that’s a whole different beast, Umbullularia californica – it’s far more potent than sweet bay, with longer, narrower leaves.
Dried Sweet Bay leaves Dried California Bay leaves
Problem is, a lot of purveyors just call their stuff ‘Bay Leaf,’ and that can make things tough on us home cooks. Different growing areas produce leaves with subtle differences you may or may not like. In any event, it’d be nice to know from whence yours came, wouldn’t it? Good outfits like World Spice and Penzey’s will tell you that.
It’s good to keep both the sweet and California versions on hand, by the way. While California bay is intense and medicinal, the sweet, (often called Turkish), is lighter, more nuanced and savory. The latter is far and away my personal go to, for the record. California bay is nice, in moderation, in low and slow soups and stews where time and temperature can simmer out the lion’s share of the more volatile constituents that spring forth early on in the cooking process. In any event, you’d be well advised to find out what variety you have, and like best.
Sweet Bay is complex, with dozens of volatile compounds onboard each leaf. The heavy hitters are cineole, pinine, linalool, and methyl eugenol. Interestingly enough, most of those compounds are also found in basil. California Bay is a bit different, packing cineole, pinine, and sabinine – that last one is responsible for things like the spiciness of black pepper, nutmeg, and carrot oil. Cineole, linalool, and pinine are terpenes, a rather volatile chemical family that has much to do with a wide variety of powerful scents in the natural world. Their highly reactive nature makes them some of the first things we smell when bay leaves are used in cooking. Methyl eugenol is a phenolic found in over 450 plants, and plays a vital role in pollination – how about that in your spaghetti sauce? These compounds are fascinating, especially when we think about how they’ve made that journey from chemical warning sign, or pollination attractor, to our dining table.
On to that experiment then, since that’s the best way to ascertain that what you’ve got in your pantry is packin’. Set a small pan of water to boil and then reduce the heat to maintain a simmer. Toss in a couple bay leaves of your choice, let them do their thing for 3 to 5 minutes, and then stick your nose down there.
The first things you get will be those fleeting terpenes. If you’ve got California bay, those notes will be the big medicinal ones, menthol and camphor. If you’ve got sweet bay, you’ll still get some hefty initial notes, like camphor from the cineole, but as simmering time progresses, you’ll catch a sort of floral skunkiness – that’s the linalool’s influence. Piney, sagey notes come from the pinine, while the methyl eugenol might remind you of general earthy, savory notes. If you let that simmer go for 45 to 60 minutes, as you would for a soup or stew, and then taste your bay leaf tea, you’ll get hints of all these things – If you don’t, then what you’ve got is old, or old, crappy bay leaf – and that’s not at all uncommon.
Bay leaf’s contribution to your cooking is subtle – it’s a background stalwart, not a lead singer. What makes a sauce, soup, or stew great is the layering of flavors, and for that, a solid aromatic base is critical. Bay lends a raft of minor notes that, while perhaps not missed in and of themselves, certainly will be if they’re absent from the mix.
So what to do in your kitchen? Start by finding your bay leaf, opening the jar and giving it a big sniff. Do you get a nice, complex but subtle whiff of the stuff discussed herein? Do you remember where and when you bought those leaves? Does the container say anything about provenance? If the answer to those questions is, ‘no,’ then trash what you’ve got and get some fresh stuff. World Spice is a great go to for bay leaf – They carry both Turkish and California, and they’re always top notch quality.
Bay does just fine as a dried herb, by the way. If you keep them in a clean, airtight glass jar, out of direct sunlight and wide swings of temperature, they’ll be good to go for 6 months, easy. If you want more from your bay, store them in your freezer and they’ll last for years.
Fresh Sweet Bay leaves
You can use fresh bay leaves in cooking, but know that their potency is quite a bit higher than dried leaves, so adjust accordingly, and again, be sure you know what you’ve got – A freshly crushed leaf of fresh bay from our garden smells subtly savory and complex, just as described, whereas, at least to me, fresh California bay smells like a medicine cabinet – an overdose of the latter will ruin a meal really quickly.
Tej patta, or Indian bay leaf
Then there’s Tej Patta – Indian Bay leaves. Indigenous to the southern slopes of the Himalayas, Indian bay is mostly wild brown, and can be identified by the 3 distinct veins running down each leaf. Seminal to Terai cuisine from the area around the mountainous northeast of the country, and to Moghul dishes like biryani and korma, Indian bay has notes of cinnamon, clove, and cassia. It’s a must have if you’re to do those regional cuisines justice.
Finally, you can grow your own if you’re living in a USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 7 or thereabouts – We’re a 7+ here in the northwest corner of Washington State, and our little sweet bay plant is doing fine, even with a couple of hard frosts under its belt. Granted, it’s a small bush and not a tree – in its native turf, it can reach over fifteen meters in height. Here’s a very nice primer on doing so.
It’s high summer here in the Pacific Northwet and, (I apologize for this next part), it’s been a very pleasant one indeed – Lots of sun interspersed with decent period of cool and plenty of rain. This means the garden is very, very happy. Despite the recent broad scale heat wave, reports from friends all across the country indicate similar bounties – This begs the question, what should we do with home grown produce?
Planting and growing a garden is an exercise that can easily lead to excess. Starters and seed packs look so dang appealing, we load up maybe more than we need. Add the unknown factor of actual produce yield, and we can easily find ourselves swimming in the stuff – Ask anyone who’s planted zucchini about that – especially the folks who don’t like zucchini…
So what should we do with our garden bounty? The answer is to have a plan, and confirm that what you have in mind is doable in the time you’ll likely have. Just as we don’t cook as often as we’d like to, (or think we will), our best laid plans for dealing with a lot of produce have to be tempered by reality. It is absolutely possible to grow a lot of veggies and keep waste to a minimum – Here are some ideas you might find appealing for your situation.
A lot of gardeners fail to take into account the amount of work actually needed – Something needs to be done daily. Frankly, this is a privilege and not a chore, and should be recognized as such. With as crappy as the world’s gotten lately, stepping into your garden after a day of reality is a gift. Watering, weeding, trimming, checking for pests, harvesting – It’s all good therapy, and it’ll keep your garden healthy and productive. And do ask yourself how often things you’ve grown rot on the vine – it happens a lot in home gardens. Making sure that what you’ve grown makes it to someone’s table really is job #1.
Stagger your planting. For one thing, doing so ensures that the kits keep on coming, and has the added benefit of making harvesting more manageable. Read up on the expected times from plating to harvest for what you grow, so you can plan accordingly. This simple step will help quite a bit, and it’s fun too –having new stuff growing and thriving is absolutely good for the soul as well as the stomach.
Be realistic about what will get used right away. With the way and frequency most folks cook, that’s an unlikely scenario. A lot of homegrown produce gets wasted because we don’t take this factor seriously enough. All that stuff looks great sitting on the counter or in the fridge, right up to the point that it starts to rot and has to be tossed. If you come all the way through the non-productive months with stuff from your garden frozen, dried, or canned, you’re doing well. Yes, fresh tastes best, but home grown is a delight any time of the year.
Some form of meal planning is a must, to avoid waste and get the most out of what we buy or grow. When harvest season is in full swing for your garden, take into account what’s fresh now, as well as what will be within the next few days, and incorporate as much of that as you can into your planning. That’ll go a long way toward limiting garden waste.
You don’t need a vacuum sealer to freeze stuff, but you do want to have sufficient, appropriate containers or wraps to get the job done. A lot of fruit and veggies will fit canning jars or glass storage containers with airtight lids, and a layer of parchment with another of metal foil on top of that will also do a fine job. Any of those options will do a good job of resisting freezer burn too.
A dehydrator does the best job of drying, but your oven on warm, or plain old solar radiation, will do fine. Store dried produce in airtight glass containers. From fruit and veggies to herbs, this is a great way to extend the harvest year round. Keep this stuff in a cool, dry corner of your kitchen out of direct sunlight, for best longevity and flavor retention.
Pickling is a great way to enjoy your homegrown goodies. A fridge pickle can be done very quickly indeed, with a minimum of fuss.
Share the bounty liberally. This is what we’re called to do as humans and members of a community. Contrary to all too common belief, food banks and shelters are happy to take excess home garden produce. It’s a wonderful gift to those in need, and if the opportunity doesn’t feed your desire for a couple more starts of this and that, I don’t know what will. Got older folks who can’t garden any more in your neighborhood? How about single parents, or young moms with their hands seriously full? Far too many of us are shy about asking, and we shouldn’t be – Chances are very good that your offer will be gratefully accepted and appreciated. How about your coworkers? Are folks at the job blown away when you describe all that you’re growing? They’ll be all the more thrilled when you share the bounty – Maybe even them zucchini.
Giardiniera – The King of Pickled Veggies. Easy to make, and a great use for those late season veggies from the garden or farmers market.
This year’s garden has been hit and miss. Some things have done nicely, others not, even with staggered plantings. That struck home when we had a look at the cucumbers and realized we wouldn’t get enough to make a winters worth of pickles and relish – That’s when inspiration struck – Why not go for a big batch of Giardiniera, the King of pickled veggies, instead?
Giardiniera, (Jar-dhi-nare-uh), is a delightful pickled vegetable mix, either done up as bite sized pieces or a relish. Redolent of fresh veggies and good olive oil, wrapped around lip smacking brininess that rivals a great cornichon – This is something we all need to be making at home.
Pickling foods to preserve them hardens back thousands of years and crosses numerous boundaries – almost every society does and has employed it. Everything from veggies, to meat, fish, fruit, nuts, and even eggs can end up in the pickle jar, much to our advantage. Pickling not only helps preserve things through the dark months, it adds a vital zip to what can otherwise be a rather bland time of year.
Giardiniera hails from Italy, and means literally, ‘from the garden, (also called sottacetto, or ‘under vinegar.’) While variants come from all over the boot, the versions we’re most familiar with has southern roots, down where the mild Mediterranean climate fosters a wide variety of veggies, the best olive oil, and great sea salt. That’s where those colorful jars filled with cauliflower, carrot, olives, onions, peppers, and chiles hailed from.
You’ll likely find jars of the bite sized version of giardiniera in your local grocery, with the fancy olives and other pickled goodies. While some of the commercial stuff is pretty good, none of it can match what you can make at home, and to top things off, it’s remarkably easy to do, (And frankly, the relish version of giardiniera is much more versatile, and rarely found in stores).
Seasoned with fresh herbs, maybe even touched with a little hot chile flake, giardiniera is fabulous on sandwiches, (including burgers and dogs), pizza, salads, and as a table condiment with more dishes than you can shake a stick at. Now is the time to be doing up a few batches of your own – it’s fairly traditional for giardiniera to be made in the fall, as a catch all for all those late season veggies we don’t want to lose to the first frost.
The American home of giardiniera is Chicago, where that famous Italian beef sandwich hails from. Slow roasted beef, cooked over its own jus, sliced thin and slapped onto a nice, dense roll, ladled with a generous spoon of giardiniera, a little jus, and eaten in the classic sloppy sandwich hunch – a little slice of heaven.
Italian Beef Sandwich, fueled by Giardiniera
Making giardiniera is a real treat. Your first and foremost issue, naturally, is what to put into the mix. The blend I outlined earlier is generally recognized as the classic base mix, but pretty much anything goes, (I should note that peppers and chiles were not in the original Italian versions of the dish, as they didn’t show up in European cultivation until the 1700s.) firm veggies, like carrots, celeriac root, turnips, cauliflower, broccoli, and asparagus do well. Peppers and chiles will do well too, though really soft stuff like tomatoes tend to break down quickly.
Making giardiniera couldn’t be easier. While some recipes call for cooking or fermenting, (both processes are perfectly fine), the simplest version is, for my mind, best – Just brine your veggie mix for a day or two, until you reach the degrees of zip and bite that you like, and that’s it. You’ll find recipes that call for the mix to be stored in brine, oil, vinegar, and a simple vinaigrette – My money is in the latter option – that will provide a nice stable medium, and a great taste as well.
There are typically mild and spicy (AKA Hot) versions, and extensive regional variety, like the Chicago style that includes sport peppers and an accompanying degree of heat. Down south, the version that goes with a muffuletta sandwich is mild and heavier on the olives. Those are great, and worth your time to build, but really, look upon giardiniera as a launching pad for creativity – You really can’t go wrong if it’s made with stuff you love – For instance, I didn’t have celery when I made up the relish version, but I did have fresh celeriac root, and it turned out to be a wonderful substitution.
You can use any oil and vinegar you like for the base vinaigrette. Seasoning can be as easy as good salt, olive oil, and vinegar. When you feel like adding additional spices, be conservative in both number and ratio – The rule of three is a good thing here.
Unless you process your giardiniera in a hot water bath, keep in mind that this is basically a fridge pickle. If made carefully, and packed into sterilized glass jars, it will last a month or two refrigerated. Just keep in mind that they’re not shelf stable unless you go through the canning process. Accordingly, what we offer below are small batches that will make a couple of quart jars of finished product. There are cooked and fermented versions out there, and we’ll leave those for you to explore.
Giardiniera Relish
A quart of fresh Giardiniera will last a couple months in your fridge
For the base mix
1 Green Bell Pepper
1 Red Pepper
1 small Sweet Onion
2-4 Jalapeño Chiles
1 medium Carrot
1 Stalk Celery
1/2 Cup Cauliflower florets
1/4 Cup Pickling Salt
For the final mix
1 Cup White Vinegar
1 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
6-8 large Green Olives
1 Clove Garlic
1/2 teaspoon Chile Flake
1/2 teaspoon Lemon Thyme
1/4 teaspoon ground Black Pepper
Rinse all produce thoroughly.
Stem, seed, and devein the peppers and chiles, (leave the veins in the jalapeños if you want more heat).
Cut all veggies for the base mix into a uniform fine dice, about 1/4″ pieces. It’s not important to be exact, just get everything about the same size and you’ll be fine.
Transfer the mix to a glass or stainless steel mixing bowl. Cover the mix with fresh, cold water with an inch or so to spare.
Add the pickling salt and mix with a slotted spoon until the salt is thoroughly dissolved.
Cover with a tight fitting lid and refrigerate for 24 hours.
After 24 hours, take a spoon of the mix out, gently rinse it under cold water for a minute or so.
Test the degree of pickle and softness of the veggies. If you like what you’ve got, move on – If not, give it another day.
When you’re ready to prep the final mix –
Remove the base mix from the fridge and transfer to a single mesh strainer. Run cold water over and through the mix, using your hand to make sure that the salt solution is rinsed off.
fine dice the olives, peel, trim and mince the garlic.
Add all ingredients to a glass or stainless mixing bowl and stir with a slotted spoon to thoroughly incorporate.
Sanitize two quart mason jars either by boiling the jars, rings, and lids for 3-5 minutes in clean, fresh water, or running them through a cycle in your dishwasher.
Transfer the mix to the jars, and seal. Refrigerate for two days prior to use.
Giardiniera, bite size
For the bite sized version, cut everything into roughly 1″ pieces, )or larger, depending on jar size and predilection), and process as per above. A bay leaf or two is a nice addition.
Celery gets a totally undeserved bum rap. Need proof? Grow your own from heirloom seeds this year – you can thank me later. Still not convinced? Think of it this way – If we judged all apples by the qualities of the red delicious, we’d think they all sucked, too.
Wild Celery
Celery has been around for a long time, though it’s changed quite a bit from its wild roots. Celery cultivation likely began in the Mediterranean, around three thousand years ago. It’s found and cultivated widely around the globe today, (which doesn’t sound like a loser crop to me). The name derives from a late Latin word, celenon. Apium graveolens is the official moniker.
While we can plant celery and eat it in the same growing season, wild celery is a biennial plant – it flowers and seeds only in its second year.
Called Smallage, wild celery is a marshland plant up to three feet tall, with small, tough stalks and broad, spade shaped leaves. The stalks are generally not eaten, as they’re rather acidic, but the leaves are used as an herb and the seeds are the ones you want as a spice. Wild celery has a notably earthier and more potent flavor profile than its domesticated cousins.
Celery cultivars are generally hearty things that will do well in a bunch of zones and seasons. There’s 8” of snow on the ground as I write this, with temps in the high teens, and ours is merrily growing away out in the garden. Back before big Agra, it was planted as a winter to early spring crop, sewn in September and lasting until April. Celery likes moist to wet nutrient rich soils, with a little salt content.
This stuff really isn’t grown for taste
Now, about that bad rap – First and foremost is the charge that celery has no taste. Fact is, it has tons of taste, but you won’t find it in the grocery store. Here in the states, the über dominant commercial celery cultivar is one version of Pascal, and it’s frankly boring – again, think red delicious. Big Agra commercial pascal is not grown for flavor, it’s grown for durability and longevity in transport and on store counters.
Find locally grown stuff from a CSA or farmer’s market, or better yet, grow your own from a wide choice of cultivars, and you’ll find the flavor.
Celery leaf is where the real flavor is
Next, use the leaves – when I post pics of cooking with fresh celery leaf, bunches of folks take note – as well they should. The leaves are where the signature flavors of celery really are at – good celery is earthy and complex, and those leaves will add a delightfully herbaceous, peppery note to stews, soup, stir fries, braises, and bakes.
The second charge is to the effect that celery has zero nutritional value – that old saw about burning more calories chewing it than it delivers. Again, if you’re eating shitty grocery store celery, it’s probably all true – but not if you choose wisely.
A hundred grams of good celery will give you just shy of 18 Kcals, about 4 grams of carbs, and a gram of protein. You’ll also get decent shots of vitamins K, A, C, as well as follate, manganese, potassium, and calcium – so there.
What can you grow? Over a dozen cultivars – there’re stalk, leaf, and root bulb versions to try. USDA Zones 2 to 10 are good to go for much of this stuff. Choose a spot with indirect sunlight and make sure to water regularly, and fertilize once a month – it takes about 60 to 90 days for celery to mature, but once it does, it’s generally hearty and prolific.
Real stalk celery, not the grocery store kind
For stalk celery, there are some dandy Pascal variants – Monterey is deep green, with really lovely flavor, complex and peppery. Tall Utah has good flavor and big, juicy stalks. Conquistador is early maturing, great for zones with a short growing season. And if you like color, Red Stalk is a zesty cultivar from the early 18th century.
Leaf Celery
Leaf celery varieties generally have thinner stalks and notably more flavor in the leaf – they’re sometimes packaged as Chinese celery. Safir is my fave, with a crisp leaf and an excellent, peppery flavor, Par Cel is another great choice – it’s another delightful 18th century heirloom cultivar.
Tom Thumb Celeriac
In Europe, celeriac gets far more use than it does here, and we’d be wise to join the team. It’s the root bulb, or hypocotyl that’s eaten with this one, cooked or raw. There are a bunch of varieties to try, though celeriac will only thrive in zones 7 – 9. Find the Tom Thumb variety, and you’ll have a great choice for small gardens – and maybe steer clear of Giant Prague and Early Erfurt unless you’ve got a big garden – they grow humongous roots in the 2 to 3 pounds range.
What to cook with your celery? First off, any and every aromatic base mix that employs celery will be far superior with good stuff in the mix, as will the soups, stews you make from them.
Use them leaves in aromatic base mixes
When you discover that there really is flavor to go with the legendary crunch, something as simple as fresh butter and sea salt on stalks just out of the garden are pretty sublime – or maybe work up a compound cream cheese or three.
Don’t use high heat when drying celery leaf – it robs flavor and nutrients
The leaves dry well and will maintain their potency for several months, but the real joy of growing your own is having fresh available whenever the spirit moves you – I probably use celery leaf more often than I do cilantro, and I like cilantro a lot.
Thai inspired Celery Salad
Cold celery-based salads also rock – how about something with Thai Basil, cilantro, and carrot, with a spicy vinaigrette, or a celery and dried cranberry salad with nuts? Celeriac and apple salad with a creamy dressing is sublime.
Celery salad with dried cranberries and walnuts
The great thing is that once your taste buds have been alerted to the true nature of this under-sung veggie, the sky’s the limit for your creativity.
If you’ve ever lived in the southern part of the U.S.A., then you’ve likely experienced the tradition of eating black-eyed peas, (AKA, Hoppin’ John), on New Year’s Day – Doing so is believed to be not only a harbinger of prosperity in the new year, but a pretty decent hangover cure as well. Other anointed foods for New Years include pork, corned beef and cabbage, whole fish, and even ring shaped eats.
Here at UrbanMonique, we went to bed quite early on New Year’s Eve, but we still like to hedge our bets. As such, we decided it was a perfect night for M’s stunningly delicious split pea soup. That decision was made all the easier by the fact that we had leftover ham from Christmas, (including a gorgeous bone), and some amazing pea stock we froze back in the summer after harvesting snap peas from the garden. Split pea soup kinda gets a bad rap for the same reason Brussels sprouts do – Lackluster cooking, or overcooking, leads to less than stellar results – We’re here to shatter that reputation.
Ham glam shot
I hail from New England, where split pea soup has always been quite popular. Legend has it this dish was introduced to the region by southward migrating Québécois, but the ubiquity of split peas throughout many cultures may dispel that. Cultivars of Pisum sativum have been favored by humans for millennia – Romans and Greeks were growing them as far back as 500 B.C.E. – Given their propensity for far flung travel and conquest, it’s a safe bet they got them from somebody else. And in any age before modern food preservation, it’s a sure thing that drying peas was standard practice, as it still is today.
Harkening back to my comment about lackluster versions of split pea soup, it’s no surprise, frankly, when we recall the old rhyme, ‘peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.’ Lets face it, if that was good eating, we’d all still be doing it. Starting out with high quality, fresh ingredients will quickly dispel that nightmarish vision. Your journey toward that end must start with the peas themselves. Many of us have a bag of the little green guys in our pantry, straight from the store – It’s just as likely that said bag of peas has been in your pantry since the Pleistocene era too, right? If so, that’s a problem right off the bat. Dried peas, beans, etc will last a very long time, if stored properly, but left in the original plastic bag and tossed onto a shelf in the pantry doesn’t qualify as ‘proper’. The main adversary for split peas is oxygen, and that’s the case for pretty much all legumes, pulses, etc. The solution is a decent quality, air tight container – With those in use, you can easily get 3 to 5 years of storage, and if you add an oxygen absorber, like Oxy-Sorb, which is specifically made for the purpose, you ou’ll easily extend your shelf life to 10 years or more. Oxy-Sorb is great stuff, cheap, and readily available, by the way – A 100 pack costs about ten bucks, delivered from numerous online sources, and big chain grocery stores sell it as well – Same goes for decent quality food storage vessels, (and frankly, you’d be hard pressed to do better than quart, half gallon, or gallon mason jars for that job.)
As with all great soups and stews, great split pea soup depends on carefully chosen components and a specific process of assembly. It is a simple dish, but nonetheless, there are definitive steps that need to be followed. As always, this begins with the essentials, (other than peas, of course) – That’s good ham with a nice, big bone, fresh aromatics, stock, and seasoning. As for the latter, all too often what’s used for split pea soup is what’s suggested on the plastic bag they come in, AKA, water. While water sure works, stock is so much better, and is key to great soup.
Homemade, great leftovers – All you need to get started.
Vegetable or chicken stock will work great, and if you’ve been keeping up with class, then you’ve taken opportunities to make and freeze stock along the way. As mentioned previously, back in July we had a bumper crop of snap peas, and took steps to harvest and preserve those – In so doing, the inspiration for pea stock hit me and we made some – It was and is incredible stuff – a lovely translucent green, with a scent redolent of fresh peas, even when defrosted some six months later – There’s a testimonial to why we freeze, dry, can, or otherwise preserve great home grown food, if ever there was one, (That doesn’t mean you need to have matched us overachievers – Use what you’ve got – Homemade preferred, but store bought is just fine.)
And while we’re talking homemade, if and when you get a nice bone, never, ever throw it out. Sure, your critters will love ’em, but your house made stocks and broths will love ’em even more. As for aromatics – It’s a safe bet that in too many home kitchens, the carrots, onion, garlic, celery and the like might be a bit long in the tooth by the time you get around to using them – In a word, don’t do that. The French have it right when they go to the market almost daily – If it’s worth making and eating, it’s worth fresh ingredients – Don’t buy the big bags of bulk carrots, onions, etc – Go to the market frequently, and poke, prod, smell, and look when you shop – Reject the rubbery, the off colored, or too soft, and carefully pick fresh stuff – That is one of the real joys of shopping, so take advantage.
And finally, there’s seasoning. I’ve said this before and will again – If you’re buying herbs and spices from the grocery store, you’re missing out. If you’re using spices from a cute little revolving wheel thingy, and the spices came with that, and you got it when you got married, you’re fired. Herbs and spices have very bit as much a shelf life as other foods, and less so than some – they’re good for 6 months or so, if they’ve been prepared and stored properly. If your wheel o’ spices is out where sunlight hits it on a regular basis, your stuff is toast and needs to be replaced. If it’s not from a high quality source, like World Spice, Penzeys, Pendereys, to name just a few, you’ve no guarantee that what your buying is up to snuff – And finally, never use my sainted Father’s wine buying plan when it comes to spice – The more you get for less dough is not a successful strategy.
So, with all that, here’s the scoop.
M’s Heavenly Split Pea Soup
4 Cups Vegetable or Chicken Stock
2 Cups Water
2 Cups (about 1/2 pound), Ham
1 nice big Ham Bone
1 Pound dried Split Peas
2 large Carrots
3 stalks Celery
2 Tablespoons chopped Shallot
3 cloves Garlic
1 Lemon
1-2 Tablespoons Parsely
1 teaspoon Lemon Thyme
1/2 teaspoon ground Pepper
1/2 teaspoon crushed red Chile
1/4 teaspoon Sea Salt
2 Tablespoons Avocado Oil.
In a stock pot over medium high heat, combine water, stock and the ham bone. When the stock begins to boil, reduce heat until its barely maintaining a simmer. Allow the stock and bone to simmer for 60 minutes.
An hour or so of simmering will properly marry the flavors of pork Bone and stock
Rough chop ham, cut carrots into half-rounds about 1/4″ thick, chop celery, dice shallot and mince garlic.
Aromatics, the heartbeat of great soup
Zest lemon, cut in half.
Place peas in a single mesh strainer and rinse under cold running water, checking for non-food detritus.
Rinse and inspect pease before deployment!
In a soup pot over medium heat, add oil and heat through. Add carrot, celery, and shallot. Sauté until the shallot begins to turn translucent.
Always sauté your aromatics first!
Remove Bone from stock and allow to cool, then give it to your dawg.
Add stock, water, ham, and split peas to soup pot with aromatics over medium heat. Stir to incorporate. When the soup starts to boil, reduce heat to barely maintain a slow simmer. Simmer soup for 1-2 hours, until the split peas are where you like them – just slightly al dente is the sweet spot.
Great split pea soup should look like what it’s made from, not mush!
Add parsley, lemon thyme, a tablespoon of lemon zest, pepper, Chile, and salt. Stir to incorporate and taste, adjust seasoning as desired. Allow the soup to simmer for another 10 minutes.
Add the herbs and spices last so they don’t lose their floral qualities
Serve nice and hot, garnished with a little more fresh lemon zest and shot or two of hot sauce if you like such things. A dollop of fresh sour cream doesn’t suck, either.
M’s Heavenly Split Pea Soup
Serve with crusty bread and a glass of decent Zinfandel, and you’re in hog heaven.
UrbanMonique 