Goes together like Peas + Carrots

I always remembered that line in Forrest Gump.  It stuck in my head without a place to use it from 1994 until recently.  Now I use it when referring to my boyfriend Jason and me (cause we do go together awfully well).  And that, naturally, led me to me to name a blog in honor of us and our corresponding love of food. 

It's named this, too, not just because of the quote, but because of Good Housekeeping magazines from the 1950s.  Leaf thru just one issue and you will see what I mean.  Pages of recipes so hideously inedible looking that it's downright good entertainment and impossible not to be utterly fascinating.  Jellied ham and tuna molds, Vienna sausages in blankets and, of course, the ubiquitous frozen pea and carrot side dishes looking gray and dejected playing the support role to equally blanched-pale haunches of meat. All decorated with garish pimento pinwheels or radish rosettes... which is like putting makeup on a pig and just as perplexing.
It would seem the reason for the all this had something to do with World War II ending. Suddenly rationing was over so meat, eggs and dairy abounded.  A flurry of technological advances had also brought frozen convenience goods into the everyday life.  So here's the 1950's housewife, hypnotized by the bright electric hum of the freezer aisles and glossy rows of packaged butt roasts sunning themselves under the florescents in the newly born Supermarket.  After years of shelling beans and eating boiled potatoes this will apparently make you go wild with food lust and begin constructing hideously mad dishes like Spam 'n' Limas. 

From this....

To this....?

While I'm glad we've since removed the deviled eggs from our eyes as far as food sense, I do sometimes oddly long for the nostalgia of a time I didn't live in.  A time when I could deliver a tower of meat and vegetables encased in gelatin to a dinner table with a straight face.  A proud face, even.  And while I suppress the urge to make some of these unsavory dishes, I am left with the desire to "improve" upon some of the original favorites out of an odd respect to keep them alive.  Dishes that might seem silly now, but were born out of a certain kind of hopeful nation on the other side of WWII.  After all, it was what people ate as they returned from war to the dinner tables, and they were the first meals of the most influential generation of our time: the Baby Boomers.

So why not have peas and carrots?  After, they really do go together so nicely... this version joins the 21st century with the addition of fresh mint, garam masala and orange zest.  By the way, if you don't have a microplane grater, I highly recommend investing in one.  They're not only practical and inexpensive, they're actually rather fun and I find myself creating excuses to "zest" things all the time... which leads to a refrigerator full of bald, slightly embarrassed-looking citrus fruit but some very tasty food.  Go buy now!

Recipe: Peas ♥ Carrots

What to get

8 ounces of fresh or frozen peas (if frozen, keep them this way until they hit the pan)

4 medium-sized diced carrots

1 julienne cut shallot

Small handful of fresh mint leaves - chiffonade

2 diced strips of bacon

Zest of half an orange

A few dashes of garam masala

Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

What to do with it all

Heat a medium skillet over medium heat for a few seconds before adding the diced bacon (I actually like to use kitchen shears for this and cut directly over the pan).  Fry bacon until crisp and then remove.  Add carrots to the bacon drippings and sauté for 7 minutes then reduce to low and add shallots with a sprinkling of salt.  Salt removes moisture from vegetables so it's good here because you want to soften the shallots, not sauté them which would add some bitterness in this case.  After about 5 minutes the shallots will be translucent and carrots will have given up some tasty juices.  Turn the heat back to medium and add the rest of the ingredients and return the bacon. Sauté until the peas are cooked but not soggy (about 5 mins). 

Substitutions:

Fresh mint - Fresh tarragon or dry dill.  Dry mint is a no-no as it doesn't retain a fresh taste very well.

Shallot - 1/2 yellow or sweet onion

Bacon - Butter & shaved Parmesan or coconut oil & soy parm (vegans)

Orange zest - a splash of orange juice

Garam masala - ground allspice and cinnamon

Makes 1 to 4 servings depending on your appetite...for me this is one serving...

Hello.

About Peas Love Carrots Author Mathea Tanner

Culinary pursuits were ever-present in the house that Mathea grew up in.  Born to a Greek-American mother and French-Irish father with roots in the American South, there was always an assortment of dishes from Apple pie to Tsaziki being made.

She is a Chicago-based freelance writer/photographer balancing her passions with her 9-to-5 as an assistant and studies at DePaul University.

Here is the very first introductory post to Peas Love Carrots from October 2009...

I've put this off long enough.  The "introduction" post.  I have recipes and pictures and a whole head full of what I hope are super cool things to fill a blog with...and it's all piling up behind the task of this very necessary first post.  For so long I've wanted to show you how incredibly freeing and fun the kitchen can be.  Thru my eyes.  Share the fretted-over recipes I've squirreled away into an obese file (ok, it's a Mac desktop file, but it can still be fat).  The neat restaurant and odd food fact articles.  Kitchen know-how I picked up from a truly quirky Greek-American cooking heritage. Kitchen disasters and proud fearless moments...and yet I still couldn't seem to get this started and had begun to come up with all kinds of excuses: 

1. My head hurts.
2. I'm not in a "writing" mood.
3. I was attacked by man in a Subway sandwich costume and am now temporarily food-traumatized.  

Ok, so that last one wasn't something that has actually happened to me, but I imagine it could have once as I stood waiting for an express bus in the South Loop and had a man so fed up with people not taking his coupon leaflets that he lost it and started screaming in people's faces "WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR YOU TO LOOK AT ME???  I'M GIVING AWAY FREE FOOD FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!"  I could sort of see his point but still...I have never stopped imagining what would've happened had he started flailing those oversized Mickey Mouse-style mitts at everyone.

With all these excuses popping up day after day, I had to start to ask myself why I was so incredibly hesitant to write this first little piece.  It can't be shyness, can it?  There have been more times than I can count that people have come up to me and said "Mathea!  I remember the first time I met you - you were asking homeless people on the street to join us for breakfast/stealing restaurant silverware to give as gifts to the people you were dining with/wearing a bikini over your clothes at a bar and trying to get people to dance with you (no one would, oddly).  Though I'm often surprised at myself when I hear these things mentioned out of context, the theme is clear: I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself if it means keeping people entertained.  And if I can do it in person, doing it here on the faceless internet should not be an issue.

The answer came to me this morning as so many things occur to a person - as I was washing my hair in the shower.  I'm not sure what it is about the shower, but I get a lot of my best thinking done there or at some other point during my morning ablutions.  I don't think I'm alone in that because I've seen plenty of movies where a person stops mid-tooth brushing and stares in the mirror with that light bulb-over-the-head look and then runs off to rescue their kidnapped child or whatever armed with this brand new bathroom delivered epiphany.  Anybody else want to back me up on this?

Anyway, so there I was washing my hair...and I realized that this all had to do with me hating small talk at parties. The part where you say what you do for a living.  How long you've lived where you live.  Whether or not you've seen any good movies lately.  If this is something you are good at, or even enjoy, I admire you.  To me this is agonizingly painful.  A necessary evil, maybe, but I find myself wishing there was a fast forward button on the conversation so we can get to the part where we've been friends for 5 years and are laughing over "Remember whens".  Or in this case, the part where I'm cooking in my kitchen and sharing tips while I wear a bikini over my apron.  I'll bet 10 to 1 you'd remember the cooking tips way better this way, too!
   

So then I thought, why not do that?  Why not jump into the blog as if I've been writing it for 5 years?  After all, it's my blog and I can do whatever I want. Truth be told, some would say I'm late to the trend anyway, so it'll be my little way of playing catch up with the other food bloggers. As soon as this occurred to me, my anxiety miraculously disappeared, and I headed over to the computer to type.

So I'll start this post with "Hello", and end it with "Do you remember when you and I made those amazing peas and carrots together and then we practiced our Muppet Swedish Chef impersonations?  No?  Well, let me share the recipe to refresh your memory..."


- Mae