#yes i like big heaping portions of mashed vegetables what of it

[clove-pinks]

Mushy Peas 2.0: The Mushening

Finally achieved success—or at least, peas that mushed—in my second attempt at the classic British side dish.

This isn't my first time working with dried marrowfat peas; I have been buying them occasionally to make pea soup like the early 19th century Royal Navy. I finally attempted mushy peas after the recipe by Annette Yates in her cookbook English Traditional Recipes: A Heritage of Food and Cooking. My downfall was not using the soaking tablet because the recipe didn't mention it, and I didn't think it would be ~traditional~ to soak the peas with the provided tablets of sodium carbonate, sodium bicarbonate, and sodium acid pyrophosphate.

Well. Not even extra extra extra simmering got those peas to mush, and despite the overnight soak they remained tough. This time I used the tablet and simmered the peas longer. Yates' recipe calls for carrot and onion to be added to the water with the peas, then discarded after cooking. I didn't feel like ruining another sacrificial onion so I added a clove of garlic (hey, it's an allium!) which probably un-Britished it. (Ghosts of my Italian ancestors cheering in the background while my English ancestors wail).

Other recipes online, such as this one, dispense with the added sacrificial vegetables so I don't know what is Annette Yates' deal (also, they add some baking soda to mush-ify the peas, which would have been good to know!) At this point I am starting to think of her as a wee bit unreliable, not least because her English Traditional Recipes has a recipe for "Brown Windsor Soup," which is apparently a joke from a 1950s radio show??