A Green Serving

In case you missed it, this week's ST(Straits Times) Mind Your Body section featured the upcoming Singapore Meatout Week 2006, starting from 22 to 30 July, a campaign to encourage more people to eat less meat and more plant foods. There are various noble and worthy reasons to 'meatout' which relate to the saving of animals, the environment and mankind in general, but my primary reason for even contemplating a 'meatout' is a selfish one - hubby and I are way too much into meat, and ever since we started our slow crawl into middle-age, the expanding girth and creaking weighing machine in the mornings have become the 'in-your-face' signposts of the need for detoxification and some healthy time-out from meat every once in awhile.

And what a wonderful coincidence that I should decide to go totally GREEN a couple of days ago (before the ST article came out) by attempting my first green pea soup!

I don't know about you but I've always thought green garden peas (petits pois) to be rather insipid as a vegetable, their only goal in life being to end up as a side dish to accompany the real dish (for example, a good thick slab of steak). I remember as a kid, hating to eat my peas and counting them one by one as I carefully stabbed my fork on each. I was definitely not enamoured by peas.

So it was with great pleasure when I discovered that a single spoonful of pureed green pea soup was a heady concentration of the fresh and sweet flavors of garden peas. Instead of swirling in a dollop of sour cream, I added a mushroom cream made from dried shiitake mushrooms, which imparted an intense earthy punch to the soup. A wonderful start for a 'meatout' campaign!

If you are interested to try this out:

• To make the mushroom cream:

1. soften 4 to 5 pieces of dried shiitake mushrooms in a bowl of hot water
2. when softened, remove from soaking liquid, rinse and chop up the mushrooms (reserving 1 or 2 pieces to be sliced into lengths for garnishing the soup)
3. heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan, add the chopped mushrooms and some thinly sliced shallots and cook on medium heat until shallots are slightly browned
4. add a tablespoon or so of white wine (or if you prefer, Chinese cooking wine), and a few minutes later, followed by a 1/3 cup of chicken broth and some of the mushroom-soaking liquid
5. boil until the mixture is reduced by half, bring the fire down to low and add 1/3 cup of double cream and simmer for about 5 minutes or so until the mixture thickens slightly, season with salt and pepper
   
6. place the mushroom cream in a blender and puree until smooth, return to pan and keep warm
   

• To make pea soup:

1. heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan, add some sliced shallots and cook until softened
2. add 2 cups of chicken stock and bring to boil before adding about 3 cups of defrosted green peas (about 1 and a half bags) - remember to reserve a handful of the peas for the soup garnish
   
3. add about a tablespoon of chopped mint for flavor, and simmer the pea mixture for about 3 to 4 minutes until the peas are tender
4. puree the pea mixture in batches in a blender, and now comes the hardest part - sieving the pureed soup through a coarse sieve into a pot and pressing down on the solids with the back of a huge wooden spoon (a lot of muscle work here - how I wished there was a simpler way to get all that mushy goodness out of the pureed soup!)
5. reheat the soup in the pot and season with salt and pepper
   

• To make garnish:

1. heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a pan and add the sliced mushrooms and reserved peas
2. season with salt and cook over medium heat for a minute or two until just softened
3. TO SERVE SOUP: ladle soup into bowls, swirl in the mushroom cream (or if you're like me and a stickler for design, use an icing bag or conical bag), garnish with the cooked mushroom slices and peas and a few sprigs of mint.....

Psst... don't be put off by the many steps to the final ladle, it really isn't all that difficult (other than the sieving) and the resulting goodness in one spoonful is worth it!

And if you think you can 'meatout' for a day or two, drop by and do an online pledge, where you can:
Option 1: pledge to go without meat for a day or more.
Option 2: pledge to go meatless for the entire week or more.
Option 3: if you are already vegetarian, pledge to take a non-vegetarian for a vegetarian meal during Singapore Meatout Week

As for me... I always start with small steps and Option 1 shouldn't be too harmful for me!