pea soup

I rarely eat canned soup these days, but once in a while, I must have me some of that Campbell's Green Pea Soup. I have never tasted anything like it. Warm and fuzzy green love best slurped out of a mug.

The recipe will always remain a secret, I guess. Ingredients listed include green peas, flour and spice. Spice? Not even a hint? :(

I like soup. I've always liked pea soup. But I didn't realize how much I liked pea soup until I ordered Erwtensoep three times in the Netherlands and thought "man, I could never get sick of pea soup!"

"Never say 'never', San!"

Of course, food options seemed limited in the eateries we visited in Maastricht and Amsterdam: meat stew, omelettes, open-faced fried egg sandwiches, pancakes and of course, pea soup. Yes, I suppose I could have ordered a salad. But seriously.

I'm hosting a soup swap in a few weeks and I have decided to make pea soup. So far, I have tried one recipe, the Spicy Yellow Split Pea Quinoa Dal from The New Whole Grains Cookbook by Robin Asbell, and it turned out quite bland. With all the spices (mustard seed, ginger, cumin, turmeric and coriander), it was quite fragrant. But the minced jalapeño (I used a big one!) was completely lost and the soup was missing a whole lot of personality. The lemon juice and sugar added in the end helped a teensy bit, but I think a more generous portion of lemon juice could have been used.

"Well, it sure tastes healthy," remarked Ingo.

This reminded me of the time I made dinner for my cousin Steve in Taipei, linguine with roasted garlic and clams. As he slurped up the noodles, he said "this tastes so healthy--like your mother's cooking--bland!" Neither Mom nor I use a lot of salt in our cooking; but if I am to be a better cook, I can not fear the salt.

If I were really ambitious, I'd join a food blogring and present to you 52 Pea Soups in which I blog about 52 different pea soups -- I may take a break once in a while and review canned/cartoned/restaurant-served pea soups. But I am not so ambitious, not looking for a book deal, not ready to profess my undying love for pea soup by eating it once a week for a year--and really not quick with the photo uploads. (I've got pictures from a trip to Chicago in August still sitting in the camera.)

Nah, instead of starting a whole new blog--I can barely keep this one up--I'll just track my soupy details here. Not a pea soup challenge, just a pea soup chronicle. An idea, for now.