Split Pea Salad by Alison Roman

For a long time, actually my whole life, I thought split peas were simply green peas split down the middle. Sometimes things are allowed to be that simple, right? Turns out, I was sort of right. Split peas are green peas that have been peeled, dried, and then split down the middle. Split peas are grown and harvested differently than regular green peas, in a manner conducive to their drying and splitting. Personally, seems like a lot of effort to go into for some subpar grains (they don’t begin to compare to lentils or beans). And, other than split pea soup, does anyone use these split little guys in their regular cooking? I have doubts!

Alas, Alison has found a way to incorporate these oft forgone grains in a delicious salad that’s perfect for packing in school lunches and bringing to barbeques. Honestly, I’m here for it. 

I started by preparing the split peas. They needed roughly 30 minutes in boiling water to soften. I expected their bite to have a tiny mealy center, much like a lentil, but I don’t think that can be achieved without over-cooking them and letting them fall apart into a great green mush. If you want them to maintain their shape, expect their bite to resemble a slightly undercooked lentil. I combined the drained split peas with regular peas (I used frozen and thawed ones). Instead of letting my peas thaw over time on the counter, I stuck them in cold water, and they thawed within a matter of minutes. 

Next, I cooked some bacon low and slow. Ten minutes over medium heat was enough time for the bacon to render lots of fat and still get crispy, just the way Jordan likes it. The bacon fat became my cooking fat for the potatoes, which were baby dutch potatoes, quartered, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Fifteen or so minutes over medium heat was all it took for the potatoes to turn a golden, crispy brown. The trick is to avoid stirring them too much.

Before tossing the potatoes with the peas and bacon, I poured mustard and red wine vinegar in with the potatoes and coated them in the acidic liquids. The whole skillet -- potatoes, cooking fat and all, get tossed with the peas and bacon and create a wonderfully flavorful salad. Topped with fresh chives, this salad is better than any salad you’ll find at a deli counter. It can be served cold or hot, either is delicious. 

I’ve been eating this for lunch all week, and I’ve yet to grow tired of it. 

138 recipes cooked, 87 to go.

Avocados with Everything by Alison Roman

I grew up in sunny Southern California, where citrus is cheap and avocados are aplenty. Californian cuisine is famous for finding creative ways to incorporate avocados into just about any recipe (and charging you an extra $3 for it too). My aunt and uncle who live in Redlands have a backyard full of avocado trees, and a few times a year we’d come home from a visit carrying a large grocery bag full of unripened avocados. We’d wait patiently for at least a week, checking them every morning to see if they were ready for a bowl of guacamole yet. Those were special days. 

I’ve only been to New York once, and there I ate the best bagel I’ve ever had. An Everything bagel, toasted, with chive cream cheese. My breath smelled awesome for the rest of the day. I’m a sucker for anything super salty and umami-y, so naturally the Everything bagel is my favorite. (Since going Gluten-Free, I tried to make my own sourdough bagels with Everything-but-the-bagel seasoning. Sadly, my attempt thoroughly failed. I’ll try again someday with a different recipe.)

Combine my hometown and one of my all-time vacation spots, and what do you get? Avocados with Everything! Half an avocado, sprinkled with lemon juice, and Everything seasoning. Eat with a spoon for breakfast, lunch, or a snack. It’s ripe with nostalgia. 

79 recipes cooked, 146 to go.

Olive Oil-Fried Lentils with Cherry Tomatoes and a Chile-Fried Egg by Alison Roman

Alison Roman is the slightly older, cool girlfriend I wish I had in college. 

Allow me to elaborate with a story about lentils. It was a cold, January night, and I was invited to eat dinner at a friend’s college apartment. She was a Senior, I was a Sophomore. I felt very cool as I left my dorm room to skip out on cafeteria food. Shortly after arriving, I learned that we’d be eating lentils. I nodded excitedly, while inwardly racking my brain… I had no idea what lentils were. She would now begin to prepare our meal, she announced with an air of nonchalant authority. Her first step was to chop an onion. How grown-up it all sounded. I wanted to watch her up close. She took a dull bladed knife and began sawing her way through the onion’s middle. Quickly, I began to feel an odd stinging sensation in my eyes. The more I watched her, the more intense the pain became as it spread to my nose and throat. It was a foreign feeling, and it scared me out of my wits. What was happening to me? I began shedding tears. She looked at me and said “The onion’s making you cry. You should go in the other room.” The instruction sounded strange but I didn’t question her. I spent a few minutes in her bedroom as the burning sensation slowly left, all the while asking myself what just happened. That was the first time I ever cried over an onion. 

But back to lentils. By the time I emerged from the bedroom, my friend had moved on to sautéing the onion and boiling a pot of lentils on the stove. We chatted a bit as I watched her intensely, trying to appear chill. She drained the lentils over the sink and poured them into the pan full of onions. After just a few minutes of pushing them around, with a few added dashes of salt, our dinner was ready. I didn’t know what to expect. I especially didn’t expect I’d be eating a bowl of practically flavorless, mushy green pebbles. For a brief moment, I wished to be eating rubbery pork tenderloin and green beans in the cafeteria. But then I figured that this was a good growth opportunity for me. I had to learn what real adults cooked eventually. I’d be there soon myself... For the next few years, this was my impression of lentils - soft, flavorless pellets, destined for a melancholy meal. 

That friend didn’t know what the heck she was doing with lentils. Maybe I should chalk it up to a lack of experience, and she’s learned better by now. Alison Roman, on the other hand. Now there’s a friend I wish I had in college. She knows quite well what to do with lentils…  

To hell with only a white onion and salt alone. Give me shallots, garlic, and burst cherry tomatoes! Give me a pool of olive oil and black pepper. Give me black lentils instead of green. Give me a hot skillet and time to get the grains all crispy. Give me red onion slices marinated in lime juice and fish sauce. Give me tender parsley. Give me a fried egg and chile oil! THIS, friends, is how to eat lentils. 

There’s so much more I could say about lentils. So many more anecdotes, stories, existential questions. Alison has a lot of lentil recipes, so I’ll reserve these for later. Spread the love, so to speak. 

Served with Ali Slagle’s Ginger-Lime Chicken.

30 recipes cooked, 195 to go.

Special Beans in Tomato Broth and Slab Bacon by Alison Roman

Special Beans are a long game kind of dish. The game takes little active time, but you have to keep your eyes on the special prize if you want to win. 

What makes these beans so special? Alison says it’s the use of dried beans. Yes, dried beans. I’d purchased dried beans only once before during the early pandemic grocery frenzy because all the canned beans were gone. That bag of black beans is still sitting in my grain basket, untouched. 

There’s an entire essay and multiple recipes devoted to dried beans in Dining In, so I couldn’t avoid them forever. But I was hesitant. Dried beans demand a lot of forethought. These special beans needed 2 full days of soaking before they were ready for cooking. Dried beans also require commitment. There’s no sure way of telling if they’ll fully soften, so you have to soak and cook them, hoping for the best. 

Where I live, dried beans other than black or pinto are hard to find. When I went on my sumac hunt, I came across a Middle Eastern market that carries 2lb. bags of dried large lima beans. So two days before I wanted to eat my special beans, I began soaking 1lb. of lima beans in cold water. 

This being my first time around the dried bean block, I was mistaken about what would happen during this soaking period. I was under the impression that the beans would become totally softened to the point they resembled canned beans. So soft that you could eat them straight out of the bowl without cooking them. Instead, soaking just loosened the proteins in the beans, helping them expand to their true size. The beans were still rather hard and needed to be cooked for several hours before becoming edible. 

This recipe is meant to make flavorful beans, and while they can be eaten on their own, they’re best used in something else (Alison suggests her Best Baked Beans or soup). By the time I finished cooking these beans, it was 7:15pm (again, long game), so I wasn’t about to whip up another recipe. I also didn’t have time to use them in something else the next day; I travelled to Cincinnati the next morning to see my BFF / designer of my website logo (thanks, Rachel!). 

On cooking day, I began by heating the bacon in my Dutch oven with a good bit of olive oil. The key here is not to brown the bacon, but to heat it slowly so the fat has time to seep out. It’s the fat you’re really going for so it can infuse the beans with porky flavor. By this point, there should be a lot of oily fat at the bottom of the pot, enough to soak a bunch of tomatoes, shallots, and heads of garlic. (Here is another example of an Alison recipe that requires minimal chopping, if choppin ain’t your thang.) Add in some anchovies, a parmesan rind, fresh herbs, and water, and you’ve got a flavorful cooking liquid to soften your beans. 

The beans spent a little over 3 hours on the stove before they were softened to my liking. I served them in their cooking liquid with homemade sourdough and herbed goat cheese. The cooking liquid doesn’t have a super strong flavor, so we added some more salt, and even a bit of lemon juice to liven it up. 

I’ll make these beans again soon and plan to turn them into Alison’s Best Baked Beans. But next time, I’ll plan for an even longer long game. I bet it will be worth it. 

9 recipes cooked, 216 recipes to go.