The good news about sharing a kitchen with my mother is that I get to ask her questions. Don't ask me why I never noticed some of these things before, but a few of her answers have made me realize I may need to go back and edit some of the recipes I've posted.
Thankfully, I hadn't yet posted this week's recipe for green pea sauce. When I asked my mother what she puts in it, she told me that she uses two kinds of peas (regular green peas and petite peas) and that she adds onions. I had no idea! These simple additions may explain why my version never quite tasted the same. She did mention that she doesn't always use two kinds of peas and that if she can't get both, she prefers petite peas. For this recipe, I'm going to go with just petite peas since that's what I had when I was making it.
There are a lot of different versions of this sauce, and you can try it out with almost any bean. This one is my favorite, and as a child, it was the only one I enjoyed (something about this always felt like a treat, which was not the case with the other versions). It generally gets served with white rice, and my mom also likes to serve it with fowl (in sauce).
I struggled with what to call this. In Creole, the name of this recipe (Sos Pwa Frans) doesn't seem nearly as silly. My sister says I should call it pea soup since they are essentially the same thing, but I think soup generally has more ingredients and still contend that this is a sauce and not a soup, and the name in Creole actually literally translates to Green Pea Sauce. I'm also having fun calling it pea sauce, though, so I'm going to go with it.
I'll probably come back and tweak this recipe as well, but here's take one for now.
Green Pea Sauce
Ingredients: 1 (16 ounce) package frozen petite peas 3 cups of water 4 garlic cloves, minced 1/4 yellow onion, minced 2 teaspoon olive oil 1 teaspoon adobo seasoning 1/2 teaspoon Creole Seasoning 1 teaspoon chicken base 1 teaspoon seasoned salt Directions: 1. In a large pot, add the olive oil, garlic, and onions and stir on high heat for one minute. 2. Add the water and the frozen peas and cook for 5 minutes. 3. Add the remaining spices and stir well. Continue to cook until the peas are well softened, about 15 minutes. 4. Take half the contents of the pot and blend until smooth. Leave the other half cooking.* 5. Add the blended peas back to the pot and continue cooking until the sauce has thickened, about 5-10 minutes. Be careful that it doesn't get too thick!
*You can take more than half out. I just like half because I like having some of the peas not blended. If you prefer, you could probably blend all of it.