Split Pea

As I have mentioned, lentils and split peas are big in the rustic cuisines of so many countries. Greece is no exception. This very simple dish can either be served on a plate by itself as an appetizer for dipping warm pita or as a side with grilled vegetables and a salad.

Most split pea soup recipes are ridiculously predictable. Some onion, a bit of carrot, maybe some cut-up spuds. A ham hock. Inevitably, split peas are the main attraction, usually cooked to a mushy consistency. But I was looking for texture and additional flavor, so I added some dried chanterelle mushrooms; half an onion, thinly sliced well browned; some chopped tomatoes; fresh celery leaves; carrots; and spinach. I considered adding liquid smoke because the ham hock was out. But as luck would have it, one of my wooden spoons caught on fire, so I let it burn, then put out the fire and stuck the charred spoon in the soup. If a winemaker can use charred oak to enhance flavors of her wine, then why can’t I use charred wood for that desired essence of smoke in my soup? (P.S. DO NOT try this at home! Using a smoked salt should achieve similar effects without the fire!)

This long-simmering, yet easy winter soup is a natural choice as a hearty main dish. Make Whole Wheat Vegetable Muffins (page 149) while it’s cooking.

Here is one of the great offerings from Kerala, a state on the southwest coast of India, where it is known as uppama. The semolina that is required here is a coarse-grained variety that is sold as sooji or rava in the Indian stores or as 10-minute Cream of Wheat in the supermarkets. (It is not the very fine version used to make pasta.) This pilaf-like dish may be eaten as a snack with tea, for breakfast with milky coffee and an accompanying coconut chutney (see Sri Lankan Cooked Coconut Chutney), or as part of a meal as the exquisite starch.

There are hundreds of versions of this salad-like dish that are eaten throughout South India and parts of western India as well. At its base is rice, the local starch and staple. (Think of the bread soups of Italy and the bread salads of the Middle East.) The rice is cooked so it is quite soft. Then yogurt, and sometimes a little milk as well, is added as well as any fruit (apple, grapes, pomegranate), raw vegetables (diced tomatoes, cucumbers), or lightly blanched vegetables (green beans, zucchini, peas) that one likes. The final step is what makes the salad completely Indian. A tiny amount of oil is heated and spices such as mustard seeds, curry leaves, and red chilies are thrown into it. Then the seasoned oil is poured over the rice salad to give it its pungency and reason for being. This cooling, soothing dish, somewhat like a risotto, makes a wonderful lunch. It is best served at room temperature, without being refrigerated. Other salads may be added to the meal.

One of the oldest Indian dishes and continuously popular these thousands of years is khichri, a dish of rice and split peas. (Starting around the Raj period, the British began to serve a version of khichri in their country homes for breakast: they removed the dal, added fish, and called it kedgeree.) There are two general versions of it: one is dry, like well-cooked rice, where each grain is separate, and the other is wet, like a porridge. Both are delicious. The first is more elegant, the second more soothing. This is the first, the dry version. Serve it like rice, with all manner of curries.

Not only does this rice look colorful and taste delicious but the turmeric acts like an antiseptic inside the body and the sesame seeds add a good deal of nutrition. You can almost eat this by itself. Add a dal, perhaps an eggplant dish, and a yogurt relish, and you have a fine vegetarian meal. Or serve with kebabs of any sort and a salad for a light, non-vegetarian meal.

The Indian split peas, arhar dal and toovar (or toor) dal, are closely related. Both are the hulled and split descendants of the pigeon pea. Arhar, the North Indian version, is milder in flavor, whereas toovar, used in West and South India, tends to be darker and earthier. Use whichever you can find. If you cannot find either, use yellow split peas. Serve with rice or Indian flatbreads. Add a vegetable and relishes to complete the meal. Non-vegetarians may add meat or fish, if they like.

I have only eaten this slightly sweet and slightly sour dish in Gujarat, and how good it was, too. It isn’t just corn grains that are cooked in the dal but the cob itself, lopped off into reasonably sized rounds. The woody part of the cob flavors the dal in mysterious ways. You just cannot pick up these corn pieces with Western cutlery. Hands are required to eat the corn off the dal-and-spice-flavored cob sections. If you cannot find toor dal (also labeled toovar dal and arhar dal), use any other split peas that you can find easily, such as red lentils or yellow split peas. Just remember that red lentils cook faster than toor dal. This dal is put into individual serving bowls and served with rice or Indian flatbreads. A selection of other vegetables and relishes are also included in vegetarian meals. Non-vegetarians might add fish or chicken.

This is a Bengali specialty that requires that the moong dal (hulled and split mung beans) be lightly roasted first and then, when the dal is almost done, quick-cooking greens such as mustard greens, spinach, or green chard are added to make it more nourishing. There are several tiny steps required here, but each is simplicity itself. I find that most split peas and beans are so clean these days that they need no picking over. You do need to rinse them off. In the case of this recipe, the rinsing is done after the roasting, for obvious reasons. Bengalis might use mustard oil for the final seasoning. It complements the mustard greens and adds its own unique flavor. But since it is frowned upon by Western food authorities for the harmful acids it contains, I have started using extra virgin olive oil instead, another strong flavor, though a different one. For many peasants, such a dal, served with rice and perhaps followed by a yogurt dessert, makes for a rich, ample meal. You may add a fish dish.

Our family can eat this every single day of the week. It is my soul food. I love this with Plain Basmati Rice and any vegetable I feel like that day. I also love to add Lemony Ground Lamb with Mint and Cilantro.

I make this curry through the summer, whenever tomatoes overrun the vegetable garden, and then freeze some to last me through the winter. This may be served as a vegetarian curry at an Indian meal or as a gloppy, spicy sauce to ladle over hamburgers, grilled fish, and baked or boiled potatoes.

A southern potato curry from the Chennai region. In Chennai, this would be served with rice, and in the north, with a flatbread. Dal and vegetables should be added to the meal.

A dish from the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, this quick stir-fry has all the wonderful spices used in the cooking of the Chettiyars, a trading community—lots of black pepper, fennel seeds, mustard seeds, cinnamon, and the split pea, urad dal. (Yellow split peas may be substituted for the urad dal. They will be used here in a very southern way, as a seasoning.) This dish has a 30-minute marinating period, but it cooks in about 7 minutes. It is a good idea to have all the spices measured out and ready, as the stir-frying is done quickly. I like this chicken with Basmati Rice with Lentils and a green vegetable.

I love to make this soup in the summer, when my garden (or the local farmers market) is bursting with cucumbers and tomatoes and the weather is balmy. The first time I had this soup, or a version of it, was in the Maldives, at the Cocoa Island resort on the South Male Atoll, just southwest of India. For the soup, the chef, Stana Johnson, had combined South Indian seasonings and the notion of North India’s favorite cucumber raita, a yogurt relish, to fashion a light summery, cooling soup. I remember sitting in an airy pavilion, the calm blue sea on two sides of me, balmy breezes blowing past, sipping the soup a tablespoon at a time, and thinking, “This is what heaven must be like.” While the flavors were easy on the tongue, the soup was complicated to make. I have spent two years simplifying it, trying to retain its essence while cutting down on all the steps a large-staffed restaurant can do with ease. I like to serve the soup with a dollop of Yogurt Rice, page 26 or 217, right in its center. This is not essential. Just a light sprinkling of diced cucumbers and diced cherry tomatoes will do. But do try it once with the Yogurt Rice as well as the sprinkling of cucumbers and tomatoes. (You do not actually have to make the full Yogurt Rice recipe. A very quick version, made with leftover rice, follows.)

Chicken may be used instead of meat. Serve with plain rice steamed in the Persian manner (page 338) or the quick and easy boiled and steamed rice (page 339). The eggplants are usually deep-fried, but in this instance it is as good to broil or grill them, as they get stewed as well. If you don’t fry them, it is not really important to salt them (see page 289).

This Persian sauce is exquisite, with delicate spicing and dried lime as the dominant flavor. Serve it with plain rice prepared in the Persian manner (page 338) or the quick and easy boiled and steamed rice (page 339).

This is sometimes made with lettuce leaves.

A Persian filling of meat and rice with yellow split peas is cooked in a sweet-and-sour sauce and served hot with plain rice.

This is a Persian stew which is a sauce for plain rice. You will find many more Persian sauces with meat in the rice chapter. Use dried pitted sour cherries.