Scandinavian Yellow Split Pea Soup with Dilled Yogurt

My MBA program started up again yesterday. Nothing like school all day on a Saturday to shorten the weekend. In my finance class the professor had us all fill out information forms about what finance classes we have previously completed, what our undergrad degree was in, where we went to school, what we do now, etc. Needless to say, with my vast background in finance, the form took me a while to fill in. He took what seemed like great pleasure (I'm sure it was my own sensitivity to it more than anything else) in announcing to the class my undergrad major: art history and visual art, then managed the usual butchering of the pronunciation of Bowdoin College, although, shockingly, he had actually heard of it. Wow, one of five people who's heard of my college in Colorado! During the remainder of the class, he managed to find as many places as he could to state how finance is really an art form, so I shouldn't have any trouble at all (look at all those pretty graphs after all!) I actually really liked him a lot, as he has quite a lot of energy for a Saturday morning, and he stayed remarkably engaging the whole time. No easy feat for a four hour class.

I only mention my finance class because we used Whole Foods as an example company for some ratio comparisons. We looked to see why their stock wasn't comparing well in the five-year term to the S&P 500 and within their own industry. While otherwise faring well, it turns out that Whole Foods' revenue per employee was significantly lower than the industry average. My professor concluded that whole foods must have too many employees. "How's the customer service in there?" He asked. "Are there too many people in there asking you if you need help?" Until he said it, I had never considered customer service to be a problem (Except in clothing stores, where I tend to take after my mother: if I didn't ask you for help, stop following me around the store.). 

Well, let's just say that I took advantage of the overabundance of extra help last night at the Whole Foods in Cherry Creek to find the ingredients for my recipe after class got out. I found this recipe on WeightWatchers.com, and that same website claimed this recipe to be "easy," on the easy to hard scale.

I didn't find wandering around the perimeter of the grocery store to be all that easy. All in all, the trip required a phone call to find out about leeks, and how many of them would likely make four cups, and how much of one you actually use, then two different assists from a store employee who kindly explained the difference between Italian and some other kind of parsley, then grabbed some fresh dill (at this point, I still thought I needed both dill and parsley). I am too embarrassed to write here how long I spent meandering around the store looking for fresh dill. And of course it turned out to be located right next to the leeks and parsley. Go figure.

Okay, just a tiny bit of griping now. When inexperienced to cooking certain vegetables, (or fresh vegetables at all for that matter) I am finding that I really hate the learning curve of figuring out ratios. Not finance ratios, translation ratios: what is the ratio of how much a certain vegetable item translates into American units of measurement for recipes - or any form of measurement for that matter? It turns out that one leek = more than two cups. But of course it does. What else would it equal? Also, who knew how expensive leeks are? Now I have an extra leek. That's three dollars that's probably just going to sit rotting in my fridge all week until I cook again next weekend - if I do a leek recipe again, which I doubt...

Side Note: How to prepare leeks

There's a lot written and demonstrated online about how to prepare leeks. Sadly, the first site that I went to and followed wasn't as good as a later one that I found that talked about putting the sliced leeks into a salad spinner to wash them. I thought that was ingenious. The problem seems to be that there's a lot of dirt that gets trapped in the various layers of a leek. None of the darkest color green is meant to be used either. That's all supposed to be removed as it's considerably more bitter than the lighter parts. The preparation method that I really liked is on a website called startcooking.com. I have the feeling that I'm going to be referring back to that site frequently in the future. There's also a link on that site to another site called: cookingforengineers.com.

After looking at both of these sites quickly, I am once again very happy that I didn't do any research before I decided to start a blog about learning to cook. Not only am I confident that the market is already saturated with a multitude of people who already have blogs related to learning how to cook, but I'm confident that other people have and will continue to do it better. In case anyone's curious, in looking up whether or not I will be sued for posting recipes if I don't attribute them correctly, I came across foodblogalliance.com, a site dedicated to helping food bloggers, which beautifully and fully answered my question. The number one search result of my google search turned out to be yet another site called Food Blogging 101. That's right. Blogging about food cooking and preparation is now so common that an entry level college course reference can be made about it.

But do any other learning to cook bloggers out there have my brand of sarcasm? I don't think so. In case anyone actually reads this and wonders what the answer to my search question is, I believe I should be able to "attribute" the recipe to a certain author, and as long as I change a lot of the wording after the ingredient list, putting it in my own words, I should be good. Well, since I never follow a recipe correctly, anyway, I think I'm fine...

So, finally onto the recipe:

This recipe is adapted from a Weight Watchers cookbook called In One Pot, from Weight Watchers Publishing Group.

Total time including prep/cooking - about 2 hours (They lied. They said it would be done sooner than that.)

Total servings: The recipe said 8. I think it's going to end up being more like 4-5.

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp regular butter

4 cups leeks, large, cleaned and sliced (See above notes regarding that. I ended up just using two leeks and calling it good. I think that ended up being closer to 5 cups of leeks. Oh, well.)

2 cloves garlic, minced (I used three, and quite frankly, the whole minced thing just didn't seem to happen. I either need to acquire more patience in the kitchen or sharper knives. Neither of those things are likely to happen any time soon.)

8 cups vegetable broth, low-sodium (I used vegetable boullion cubes and used a combination of 1 cube with salt and 3 with no salt added)

1 pound dry split peas, yellow, packaged, picked over, rinsed, and drained

2 bay leaves (I forgot to add these when I was supposed to. Oh, well. They were added toward the end instead.)

3 medium carrots, sliced (So easy to know how many to use... if only I knew the correct size of a "medium carrot.")

2 stalks celery, sliced (I used three. I'm such a rebel.)

1 tsp dried marjoram (What do you know, I didn't actually have any like I thought I did. I added a weird combination of other odds and ends instead.)

1/4 tsp black pepper, (Never ended up adding any. oops. Still had plenty of flavor.)

For the topping:

freshly ground 1/2 cup(s) low-fat plain yogurt (I used fat free greek yogurt instead, and I used a whole 6 ounce container. Once again, total rebel, I know...)

3 Tbsp dill, fresh, or parsley (Hey, look who didn't read the recipe correctly when she started, it turns out I didn't even need to buy both dill and parsley. Well, now I have a ton of parsley to figure out what to do with.)

2 tsp lemon zest, grated (I used one lemon, since that's how much I bought, and called it good.)

Instructions:

1. Heat the tablespoon of butter in a dutch oven over medium high heat. Then add the garlic and leeks, allowing the onion to cook. (This took me about 10 minutes, and every time I stepped away, the leeks started to burn on the bottom of the pan. So annoying.)

2. Add the broth, yellow split peas, and bay leaves, and allow to cook on low for 50 minutes, covered. (The original recipe called for only 25 minutes here. Maybe it's because of the higher elevation here in Denver, but the peas weren't even remotely done after 50 minutes, which was the original time called for in this recipe.)

3. Add the carrots, celery, and other spices, and allow to cook for another half hour or so, until the peas are totally softened.

4. While allowing the soup to cook, prepare the topping by combining the yogurt, dill or parsley (I used dill), and lemon zest. Place this all back in the refrigerator to allow the flavors to blend.

5. Remove the bay leaves (I had trouble finding the second one. Took some legitimate digging around in the peas and vegetables with the soup spoon). So when the soup was finished, I am sorry to report that I looked at it and decided that it looked thoroughly unappealing in its final state. It reminded me too much of the vegetable soups that I would try to get down (and hated) when I was little. Truth be told, I never liked cooked celery or carrots growing up, and I still don't find them all that appealing in a soup. To get around all of that, I decided to use the hand blender that Mom bought me for Christmas last year (Yet another, "if I got this gadget, I'm sure I'll use it" that never panned out.) And blended all of the soup together. It looked way better this way, and hid most of the evidence of cooked vegetables.

After adding the topping, I enjoyed my soup, and I think I'll definitely be able to enjoy it again. The yogurt/dill/lemon added a great kick to it.

Okay, hopefully future posts won't be quite this long. I did enjoy the process of making this one, once I got all of the ingredients home. I totally could have added the third leek too...