I really don’t see the problem here. My fridge is never without frozen peas.
Add peas to egg fried rice, as mentioned.
In Thai red or green curry (I use a ready made cooking sauce most of the time for that and throw in any veg I have lying around. It often ends up including peas.)
In Indian-ish curry (mine involves onion, ginger, mustard seeds fried together. Add tin of tomatoes, boiled potatos, the peas, curry powder, five-spice powder and cardamom pods)
Chinese-ish chicken soup. (make stock out of chicken and add spring onion, those peas, pak soi, rice noodles and soy sauce)
Fish and chips. And peas. (I prefer whole peas to mushy ones personally)
Macaroni with ham, cheese, carrots, peas and black peppers. (I’m not messing with your beloved mac 'n cheese (ew), I got that one of a cook book, thank you very much. Oslo Ostragoth is right, though, pea soup requires split peas.
Get some pasta shells and cook them up. Toss in some butter garlic for a sauce and toss with peas and some other veggies. Top with grated parm and you are good to go.
Visual for comparison. The terms “hot dog”, “weiner”, and “franks” (short for “frankurters”) get pretty much mulled together here in the U.S. Confusingly, a “hot dog” can refere both to the weiner itself, or to the entire assembly of weiner + bun + condiments as a whole.
Connotatively, “sausage” means something different for most Americans, too. When someone says “sausage”, a hot dog is not typically what comes to mind.
[hijack]
My wife recently picked up some ready-to-go garam masala at the regular old grocery store. Had no idea that would be found in the spice aisle – first time I’d seen it.
Well, anyway, it seems to roughly combine the five-spice and cardomon for you ahead of time. Pretty neat.
[/hjack]
The version of the catching a bear joke I heard went like this:
[spoiler]
How do you catch a bear?
First you dig a hole and collect a bunch of wood. Throw the wood into the hole and light it on fire. Let the wood burn fully until all that’s left is a pile of ashes. Then cover up the hole with sticks and ferns so the bear expects nothing. Now, it’s a little known fact that bears love peas, so get yourself a bag of peas and start placing them around the rim of the trap. Then when the bear comes to take pea you kick him in the ashhole.[/spoiler]
They have a lot of Indian-tyle spices at the grocery store nowadays. And the really awesome thing is, while it’s expensive, it tastes better than the stuff you get at the Desi Mart.
To the OP: I second the Indian-style rice. Yum!
Yeah, that’s what was confusing me. It was the “frankfurter” (a hot dog) and then “sausage” (generally not a hot dog) that left me wondering. Thanks for the clear up.
Apologies: this is what happens when the 2 countries separated by a common language thing is most evident. Obviously complicated by the fact I tried to make myself better understood and failed horribly!
It’s recognizable as a sausage, but Irish sausages are much more fine grained and contain more fine breadcrumbs than most of our sausage. Our most common sausage is more often called “breakfast sausage”. This is ground pork seasoned with salt, pepper and sage. It comes in links, patties (like tiny hamburgers) or loose. Then there’s Italian sausage, available in both sweet and spicy. I think the predominant flavor there is anise, with red pepper in the spicy. This sausage is used in links for sandwhiches, with red pasta sauce, melted mozarella cheese and roasted red peppers and onions. Or it’s browned as loose sausage and added to red pasta sauces and other heavy Italian dishes. Finally, there’s summer sausage, a smoked sausage eaten cold or room temp, often with cheese and crackers. It tends to be a picnic or watching-the-game thing.
There’s also bratwurst, keilbasa, liverwurst and other sausages, but they’re never called just “sausage”. Hot dogs (aka frankfurters) are technically sausages, but we don’t call them that. [/sausage fest]
I love frozen peas!
Green pea pie is one of my favorite recipes. I know it sounds weird–I read about it in an excellent food book by John Thorne, tried it once, and now it’s an indispensable part of my repertoire.
You make a basic double-crust pie (use a pie crust recipe from the Joy of Cooking or somesuch, and read Jeffrey Steingarten’s essay on the perfect technique for a light, flaky crust) and fill it with frozen green peas–you don’t need to defrost them first–and some kind of other flavoring agent; Thorne suggests bits of gribenes (the chicken equivalent of cracklings–fry pieces of chicken fat and then strain the little brown crunchy bits out and stir them into the peas) but since I’m a vegetarian, I use some fried minced onions and thyme leaves. Bake the whole thing. The peas defrost and cook as the pie crust browns. It’s delicious.
Divide the big honkin’ bag into smaller freezer bags NOW. Frozen peas are immensely better than canned varieties but they still suck when freezer burned.
Use for quickie, last-minute toss-ons for stir fries, pasta thingies, etc.
Add, right at the end, to casseroles and stews. Even frozen ones get mushy and nasty, really fast.
Defrost, blot and toss into salads. They’re tender and entirely yummy, just as is.
For a fast, delicious almost-fresh (i.e. frozen) pea soup:
heat one can of veggie or low fat chicken broth; simmer down by half
a few minutes before removing from heat, add either dried or fresh herbs, e.g. a sprinkle of dill or tarragon (rub gently between palms first)
remove from heat and pour into blender or zap with immersion blender while still in the pot
adjust to taste, with salt (to accent the sweetnes of the peas) or a swirl of creme fraiche or half and half. Or plain old milk.
If it isn’t bright green, you overcooked it. The soup is just a vehicle for the fresh, tender taste of peas.
Kickass sidedish: heat a bare whisper of real butter (no fakes) in a saucepan or skillet, just until barely melted. Immediately toss in frozen peas. Swirl for just a few seconds, until warmed through and coated. Plate immediately.
OK, I found where I wrote down the exact recipe with cooking times and such. Here’s a link to the exact recipe:
The pie crust recipe:
Cut 2 sticks of butter into irregularly sized pieces. Mix 2 1/2 cups flour with 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp sugar (and chopped herbs, grated parmesan, etc. if you like). Rub the butter into the flour mixture with fingertips until some of the flour is totally mixed with the butter, but some palpable lumps of butter remain in the mixture as well. Pour in about 1/3 cup water and stir just until the batter holds together in a big ball. Let the dough rest for about an hour and then divide in half and roll out. Extra pieces are tasty baked with cheese on top.
And pretty much how I feel about it. Peas are fine, but most of the time, it seems like peas just get added to stuff, and they’re really not needed. I also don’t like peas in my rice. I don’t like them in my Lipton Cup O’ Noodle soup. I don’t particularly care for them most places they get tossed in.
A pea-centric recipe I’m willing to try, but tossing peas in where they don’t really belong, not so much.