Yellow Split Pea Soup with Coconut Milk, Spinach and Shitakes

My husband was in Oklahoma City tonight for dinner at 105 degrees. He thoroughly enjoyed his dinner and was sending me photos and descriptions throughout dinner. I will blog about this tomorrow. He was quite pleased with his meal and picked up the raw entertaining book while he was there. Since I knew he was going to be having a nice meal tonight I wanted to make something nice for myself.

As I mentioned earlier I was reading this soup cookbook from Deborah Madison over the last few days. This soup stood out to me as something that was an unusual use of split peas with Thai flavors. I have changed the method and ingredients. I eliminated the added oil and added a few ingredients not in the original (lemon grass, kaffir lime, garlic, ginger and shitakes). If you like Thai food I think you will like this. Here is what I made myself tonight for dinner.

Yellow Split Pea Soup with Coconut Milk, Spinach and Shitakes
Adapted from “Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen”
Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

1 pound yellow split peas, sorted through and rinsed
water to cover by a couple of inches, for soaking
8 cups water for cooking
3 bay leaves
6 whole cloves
1 stalk lemon grassed, bashed
14 ounce can light coconut milk
5 kaffir lime leaves, very thinly cut with scissors
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 ½ teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cardamom
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
4 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
½ tablespoon fresh ginger, minced
20 stems of cilantro, stems and leaves separated
1 lime, zested and juiced
6 cups spinach, julienned
6 shitake caps, thinly sliced

1 cup millet
2 cups water

1 recipe tofu sour cream (oil eliminated)

Directions:

Soak the yellow split peas for one hour. Drain and rinse the peas until the water runs clear. Add the 8 cups of water to the pot and bring to a boil. Make a sachet of the bay leaves, cloves and lemon grass so they can easily removed when the beans are cooked. When the beans are tender (after about 60 minutes of cooking) remove them to a blender and puree until smooth. Return the bean puree to the pan.

When the beans are almost tender start the millet cooking. Combine the millet and water and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook covered for 20 minutes. Hold the millet covered until needed.

Add the coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves, salt, turmeric, cardamom, cinnamon, red pepper flakes, garlic, ginger and finely diced cilantro stems to the pureed beans and simmer until the flavors have married. This should happen in about 15 minutes.

When you are ready to serve add the lime juice to the soup. Place the millet, julienned spinach, and minced cilantro leaves into the individual bowls top with soup, sliced shitakes and tofu sour cream and a cilantro and lime zest garnish.

Nutritional Information (doesn’t included the tofu sour cream):

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 325.12
Calories From Fat (18%) - 57.58

Total Fat - 6.14g
Saturated Fat - 3.68g
Cholesterol- 0mg
Sodium - 441.73mg
Potassium - 771.74mg
Total Carbohydrates - 53.98g
Fiber - 15.24g
Sugar - 3.47g
Protein - 14.77g

Comments:

I enjoyed the texture of this soup. It is thick without being fatty. I also like that the spinach is heated only the warmth of the soup retaining as much nutrition as possible. The original soup used white rice, but I used millet since it is healthier. The flavor of this soup is definitely Thai inspired. I would not have thought of using pureed peas with these flavors but I am very glad Deborah Madison did. This is destined to become one of my favorite winter soups.

Each serving of this soup contains approximately 3.850IU of vitamin A, 27mg of vitamin C, 100mg of calcium, 4.5mg of iron, 210mcg of folate, 150mcg of vitamin K, 270mg of phosphorus, and 120mg of magnesium.

Unrelated note:

I am off to try to get some sleep, assuming little Nicco (aka. Binky) allows his mommy to sleep. When Dan is out of town Binky doesn’t sleep, and doesn’t think I should either. Wish me luck that he has outgrown this phase, since he is 8 years old.

I will be back in the morning with the 105 degrees update. From what the hubby tells me it was quite good and he definitely had a favorite or two.