CHIAVARI, Italy - Long before I decided to move to Italy I
worked as a cook at the Syracuse Hotel, in Syracuse, New York. The Chef, who
was from Switzerland, had been trained in Europe and had worked in some pretty
impressive restaurants. He was delighted to have me in the kitchen for unlike
the rest of the staff, I was interested in food, I liked to cook, wanted to
learn
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| They Don't Call Me Sweet Pea for Nothing |
Most of the others wer ex-military cooks whose culinary training
consisted of a Mess sergeant telling them to cook whatever they were cooking
until it was dead, real dead. And they did.
Unfortunately the Chef and I didn’t work together very often. He
did volume cooking for banquets and weddings which required massive amounts of
food cooked in pots that were bigger than my bathtub and I was assigned lunch
duty at one of the hotel restaurants and responsible for the cold dishes served at the Sunday brunch.
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| Just Defrosted, Not Cooked |
Lunch was a lot of work but brunch was fun. On Sunday mornings I
would go into the giant walk-in coolers and see what was left over from the
banquets and events that had been held during the week.
Whatever was in there was what I had to use for the brunch
table, but first it needed to be transformed into “new” food. It was a
fascinating journey because there were always unusual and interesting foods,
like hearts of palm, to experiment with.
What I found one auspicious day was a tray of hollowed out tomatoes that had been filled with something
smooth and green. I tasted it. Puree of peas most certainly, but there was also
something else, something I couldn’t identify but made the puree very, but very
delicious. I couldn’t wait to see the Chef and ask him what the other
ingredient or ingredients were.
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| So Good |
“Calves brains,” he said when I finally caught up with him.
“It’s a puree of peas with calves brains.”
Oh yuck!
That kind of put a damper on my love affair with pea puree that
is until last summer when I decided it was time to try it again. After a bit of
thinking I came up with a simple version that is actually quite delicious. Not
as delicious as the puree in the Chef’s stuffed tomatoes, but delicious enough
that my friend Gary took the recipe home and made it for Chris, his significant
other. It got a thumbs up.
As with many of my recipes there are no exact measurements, so
you'll have to use your own best judgment.
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| Sweet Summer Soup |
PEA PUREE SOUP
One large bag of
tiny frozen peas (not defrosted)
1 bouillon cube
(vegetable or regular)
1/8th teaspoon fresh lemon or lime
juice
Boiling water
A tiny pinch of
salt
Dissolve the bouillon cube in enough boiling water to cover the
frozen peas. When dissolved, turn off the heat and add the entire bag of frozen
peas. Let the peas sit in the hot bouillon for a minute or two until they are
defrosted, but not cooked.
When the peas are defrosted put them, take them out of the broth
and put them into a blender. Add a small amount of the boullion and puree on
medium speed until perfectly smooth. The soup should be thick, but pourable.
Add the fresh lemon juice and stir. Transfer to a glass pitcher and cover. Let
cool. This soup is best served cold.
In Chef Thomas Keller’s best selling cookbook “The French
Laundry” there is a pea puree soup similar to mine except I don’t think he adds
lemon or lime juice but what he does add is a few drops of white truffle oil
just before serving. He also serves the soup with cheese crisps, aka fricos.
Fricos can be made
in a nonstick sauté pan one by one, or in batches on baking sheets in the oven.
The idea is to just sprinkle enough cheese so that it melts and creates a crispy,
lacy circle that holds together. Makes
8 crisps.
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| Parmesan Fricos |
FRICOS
Ingredients
1 cup finely shredded or grated parmesan cheese.
Directions
Heat the oven to 375°F.
Cover two large baking sheets with
parchment paper.
Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of grated
cheese to form a 4- to 4-1/2 inch round.
Spread the cheese evenly with a fork.
Repeat with the rest of the mixture,
leaving 2 inches between each round.
Bake each sheet (one at a time) until
the crisps just begin to color, 6 to 8 min.
Don't let them fully brown or the
cheese will be bitter.
Use a spatula to lift the edges of
the crisps and loosen them from the baking sheet.
Remove the crisps and immediately lay
them over a rolling pin or the side of a bottle to give them a curved shape.
Or for a flat frico, just transfer to
paper towels.
You can eat them as soon as they cool
or store them in an airtight container for up to two days.
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