Yellow Pea Soup and Why Sweden Never Gets Invaded

Swedish Soup

YELLOW PEA SOUP WITH PORK
(Ärter med fläsk)

INGREDIENTS

1¼ pounds yellow split peas
6½ cups water
8 ounces salt pork
1 carrot
1 large yellow onion
¾ teaspoon fresh ginger (about ⅔”)
3 cloves
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon marjoram
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon thyme
¼ teaspoon white pepper

Makes 8 bowls. Takes 3 hours in addition to the time spent soaking peas overnight.

PREPARATION

Rinse peas in colander to remove grit. Add peas to large pot. Add enough water to cover with 1″ to spare. Let peas soak overnight.

Drain and rinse peas. Add peas and 6½ cups water back to large pot. Add pork to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Let boil for 2 minutes. Stir occasionally, enough to keep peas from sticking to bottom of pot. Reduce heat to warm, cover, and simmer for 1 hour. Stir gently and occasionally. Skim off any form and pea skins.

While peas and pork simmer, dice carrot. Mince ginger. Divide onion in three. Stick cloves into each onion third. Add carrot, onion, ginger, bay leaf, and cloves. Let soup simmer for another 1 hour. Stir occasionally. Add bay leaf, marjoram, salt, thyme, and white pepper. Cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 30 minutes more or until peas are completely soft. Stir occasionally.

Remove pork and onion from pot using slotted spoon. Dice about ¼th of the pork. Cut remaining pork into slices ¼” thick. Remove cloves from onion. Mince onion. Return diced pork and minced onion back to pot.. Stir with whisk until well blended. Remove bay leaf.

Add ⅛th of the pork slices to each serving bowl. Ladle soup from pot into serving bowls. This soup goes well with potatoes and Swedish mustard.

TIDBITS

1) The light emitted from stars appears to be red. That means they are moving away from us. Scientists used this knowledge to formulate the Big Bang Theory.

2) The Big Bang Theory holds that everything in the universe started from a teeny, tiny point, then pow! it exploded like an egg in the microwave.

3) Or like popping popular popcorn in a popcorn popper without the popcorn popper’s lid on.

4) I did that experiment in my college dorm. While I found that the kernels did indeed pop outward, they did not travel far and certainly not fast enough to exhibit a red shift.

5) Which would have been cool, although I wonder about the damage to the dorm walls caused by popcorn traveling at 100,000 miles per second. Probably would have gotten me kicked out of college.

6) On the other hand, NASA certainly would have contacted me. I mean they spend billions and billions on launch rockets that can only achieve about 7 miles per second.

7) Of course, sending a manned space station to the outer reaches of our galaxy at such a terrifying speed would require a really big popcorn popper.

8) But America is a land of ingenuity, and a relentless dedication to innovation. If we want to build a popcorn popper that can fling a space station into outer space at 100,000 miles, we will do so. After all, we have invented sliced peanut butter.

9) Sweden, however, is certainly way ahead of America in the race to invent the near-light speed popcorn popper.

10) Look at the title of this recipe. Look at the above picture. The Swedes like yellow split peas. This means they prefer this color of split peas over green ones. Or . . .

11) The Swedish have discovered a way to hurl their split peas at such a prodigious rate that the light emanating from their legumes appears yellow. That’s not quite as impressive as a red shift sure, but it’s some million times faster than the speediest military jet.

12) Sweden has not been at war for 200 years, even though two world wars raged all around it in the twentieth century. Why?

13) Sure Germany and Russia built impressive tanks, fighter planes and bombers. But no country’s military stands a chance against a nation that can fling hot, nearly molten split-pea soup toward it at over 100,000 miles an second.

14) Or even 50,000 miles a second. And Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, and Stalin knew it. So they left it alone, even though that happy Nordic land has such wonderful pastries.

15) You can order this tasty soup when visiting Sweden, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Soup that travels that fast is impossible to eat. Best try making yellow pea soup from this recipe. Just be sure to buy yellow split peas that are stationary. Doing so isn’t always obvious. You might have to read the packaging for the peas.

– Chef Paul

My cookbook, Eat Me: 169 Fun Recipes From All Over the World,  and my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, are available in paperback or Kindle on amazon.com

The cookbook is also available as an e-book on Nook

or on my website-where you can get a signed copy at: www.lordsoffun.com