I saw this great, or so I thought, recipe in Cottage Life Magazine, thought I’d try it out.
It’s peas, finely chopped shallots, mint, boiled then pureed, mixed with lemon juice, lemon zest and cream cheese. Sounds so yummy, I love peas.
I substituted low fat cream cheese:dubious:, but the result is less than wonderful. It’s a little tasteless. I can taste the peas, but not a lot.
So I added in some garlic, (I could add more), and some finely chopped green onions and some pepper. Better, but still somewhat bland.
It called for a cup of cream cheese but, since is comes in a two cup portion I doubled the recipe, assuming it would be yummy and I would love it.:smack:
So there’s a lot of it. It’s not inedible but it’s not wonderful either.
What kind of peas did you use (frozen/canned/fresh/dried)?
Unless you were using dried peas, my WAG is that the initial boiling step took away a lot of the flavor. There’s no need to boil any of that - it can be pureed from the start. Of course, if you were starting with dried you’d need to cook them.
To fix things, I’d mix in more peas. Frozen are your best bet. Just let thaw (or microwave gently to thaw) and mix 'em in. Voila, more pea flavor and some chunkiness.
You didn’t mention salt. Many bland things can be improved with more salt. You can test this out by taking out a small spoonful, sprinkling a little salt on top, and tasting. If it tastes better, then you need more salt in the whole dish.
More acid will also up the flavor quite a bit. More lemon juice might be the trick.
Add a good grated parmesan cheese, that will add some saltiness and bump up the flavor. Not quite sure how that will mix with the mint, though. I used to make a pea spread with cottage cheese rather than cream cheese.
