Blended split pea soup

Description

This recipe is low cost, easy to prepare and provides protein in a vegetarian or vegan diet. It can be a soup or a bigger dish depending on how much water and how much ofthe other ingredients you use. Bread, expecially wholemeal bread would complement the protein in the peas.

Ingredients

If you feel like a bigger meal you can use more of everything in similar proportions.

• 50 to 100 grammes yellow split peas (You can make more and use the rest for a salad or something else the following day.)
• 1 carrot
• 1 tbs rape seed oil
• 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
• Yoghurt (optional vegans can leave this out)
• Vegan cheese alternative (also optional, probably not worth adding if using yoghurt)
• Different types of curry powder to taste
• Vegetarian stock powder to taste

Directions

1. Soak the split peas 8 -12 hours or overnight, ideally changing soaking water several times.
2. Put the split peas in a saucepan, bring to a boil and cook until partially done.
3. Meanwhile cut up the carrot and onion.
4. Heat the oil in a a thick bottomed saucepan, fry the carrot and onion gently till it’s partially cooked.
5. Add the split peas, stock powder and curry powder, and cook till well done.
6. Blend
7. Put into bowls, add a dollop of yoghurt if using. (Vegan soy youhurt probably also works but I haven't tried it.)
8. Serve.

Result

I've made this twice so far:

• The first time I left out cheese flavour sauce, added yoghurt to the first bowl and ate the second bowl as a vegan dish without it. I liked the first bowl much better.
• The second time I added a rounded tablespoon of vegan cheese flavour sauce with the curry powder because the packet advises cooking it, other vegan cheese alternatives may be prepared differently. I used less curry powder because cheese and cheese flavour are western traditions. I stirred the cooking mixture quite a bit to make sure the sauce didn't get lumpy as I have little experience using it and didn't want things to go wrong. Later after adding water, I added vegetarian stock powder because I felt there was too little salt. I really liked it. The dairy free cheese flavour sauce improved the flavour enormously compared to the second bowl I ate without yoghurt a few days before. Still that sauce is fairly expensive and does not make the dish significantly more nourishing. It added about 30p per portion to the cost of the dish which should be good for most people. I don't recomment this for people struggling to pay bills as low cost dairy cheese is cheaper and does more to keep you healthy.

I certainly plan to try this again with different variations but I have plenty of different pulses in my freezer at the moment and it will be some time before I cook split peas again. Readers may have ideas of their own for variations.

See also

• Split pea, cucumber and yoghurt salad