Skip to main content

Aug 8 - Cream of Broccoli and Green Pea soup.



This was originally intended for my main blog 3 years ago , but it got diverted as a contributed recipe to a very prominent Indian Newspaper based out of Chennai. Little did I realize at the time what a bunch of sub standard unprofessional freeloaders they'd turn out to be. This soup was inspired and adapted to Indian flavors from Ree Drummonds recipe but took on a marked South Indian tinge with the finishing touches of pickle oil and 'kadugu mangai sauce'. Copying and pasting the entire recipe since it was mine in the first place!


Cream of Broccoli & green pea soup
(makes ~ 4 servings, Prep time: ~10 min, Cooking time: ~ 20 min)
You need:
• 1 1\2 cups Broccoli florets (no stalks) shredded through a grater
• 1\2 cup fresh, frozen or dried green peas
• 4 tablespoons Ghee
• 2 medium sized onions finely diced
• 1\2 teaspoon powdered cumin
• 1\2 cup all purpose flour (Maida)
• 2 – 2 1\2 cups milk (add more as per taste)
• Fresh cracked peppercorn to taste
• 1\2 - 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (depending on how thick you prefer your soup)
• Salt to taste
• Your choice of any mustard based traditional pickle sauce/oil
Method:
Add one cup of water to the peas and pressure cook them until soft. Using the back of a spoon, mash the peas and set aside.
Simultaneously, heat the ghee in a heavy bottomed pan. Just as it begins to shimmer, add diced onions and sauté for about 5 minutes on medium heat, until they turn soft and translucent. Add powdered cumin, and mix it well with the onion. (This allows the aromatic oils from the spice to be released). Now stir in the flour and cook for about a minute. Then add shredded broccoli, cracked peppercorn and just a pinch of salt (Add the salt judiciously since the cheese already contains plenty of it). Stir in milk, adjust the heat to medium-low, add the cooked peas and cook until the broccoli is soft. (~15 minutes)
Add cheese and allow it to melt completely. Remove from heat, taste and adjust for seasonings. Serve as is if you like a chunky home style texture, or if you prefer a silky smooth texture, pour the soup into a blender in batches and puree till it reaches your preferred consistency. Strain, ladle into bowls and serve warm with wedges of toast. Serve the condiment on the side to be added as per your preference. For an even milder variation, substitute the broccoli with shredded cauliflower.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Product Review: Ninja Mega Kitchen system and a recipe for Masala Dosa

 One of the biggest reasons for attending conferences is the priceless experience of meeting fellow bloggers and get an invaluable exposure to all things  culinary. This includes vendors with new products to savor and get inspiration from. I had no complaints about whatever appliances I had for making traditional Dosa (Traditional South Indian rice & lentil crepes) batter, a sturdy tabletop stone grinder that you could add the Urad dal, turn the timer on , and 30  minutes later, come back to a container full of fluffy, batter with the consistency of whipped egg whites. The The cons of this is the cleaning up, of the various parts, the roller, the grinding bin, the multiple trays on which the rollers need to be placed while transferring the rice & lentil batter, the invariable drips of thick batter on the counter.... you get the point, It takes quite a bit of time. I was pleasantly surprised when the appliance company, Ninja asked me if I'd like to try any of their

Pickling & preserving the Buddha's Hand!

 Got your attention with that sacrilegious sounding title on this post, didn't I? Well, I'm as spiritual as the next person out there, and never in my life will I ever commit that variety of Blasphemy, so nothing to fret about. I still wonder why these curious looking citrus entities (other than the obvious visual reason) were called such. It turns out that these fruits are used as a religious offering to the Buddha. My neighboring Whole Foods Market (which is quite some distance away, in Princeton) had a stock of these weird looking citrus and I must have been the oddball customer who immediately went cuckoo on spotting them. Since I had never seen one before, I immediately went for the biggest fruit with the most tentacles (since they were sold as individual units rather than by weight) The first three 'tentacles' were peeled off for their zest, dried in the oven and went into making a citrus salt for my Food52 Secret Santa .     Making

Tweaking techniques for the twenties - Idli

  Just because something works doesn't mean it cannot be improved  - Letitia Wright (Shuri) , The Black Panther The iconic Idli has and always will be a signature Indian dish. As  a child, I'd watch my mother seat herself in front of the grinding stone  (attukal in Tamil) and spend the next couple of  hours making two different batters - one with parboiled soaked rice and the other - with hydrated Urad dal.  The starch batter usually went first, and was done relatively quick. the next one - with the lentils for some reason, took over an hour. By the time I grew up, the old grinding stone had been replaced with a blender. and my mother would ever so often wax nostalgic about the old stone ground batter and how the blender heated up the batter and made the idlies lumpy instead of the fluffy spongy ones she'd eaten as a child growing up in rural Tamil Nadu. As a teenager I once had the chance to make batter the traditional way and it was one serious workout but the texture of