Experimental Cookery 2012: Minted Peas

The epic dinner that I reference in my previous post was mostly not experimental. While extremely nice, the roast chicken, roast potatoes, and baked carrots were all things that I had done before. That this was the first roast dinner I had cooked in the apartment, and also the first roast dinner that LC and I had shared since we moved in, made it marginally experimental, but that's hardly blog-worthy. (Now, if we were talking about Twitter here...)

But the thing that was experimental was the other vegetable. (Because, of course, you have to have two. That's practically a rule.) And that other vegetable was peas.

Now to date my adventures with peas have been rather limited. (Because, after all, they're peas - just how adventurous can you really expect to be. In fact, even writing "my adventures with peas" leads me to question just how absurd a concept that might be.) Basically, it has been my policy to stick them in a pot with some water, and apply heat for a few minutes. As a consequence of which, yep, they taste like peas.

But I did find myself rather intrigued by the notion of minted peas, and last night proved to be the opportunity for which I had been waiting. And so, I drew forth "Jamie's Ministry of Food", and turned to one of the few pages I hadn't faced before...

It turned out that preparing the peas was dead easy, but pretty tedious. Suddenly, my exciting two-step process had become a full paragraph of text, and involved onions, lettuce, and even flour.

And the result? Well, actually, it was not at all appetising - a slimy mush was the result. Somewhere in there, there just wasn't enough liquid in the method, or too much heat, or something. So, that needed fixed.

Anyway, that done, the peas once again looked more or less like they should, albeit considerably less impressive than the carrots. They were served, tried, and they were... okay.

Ultimately, the minted peas were just too much effort relative to the result. They were nice enough, but I think I preferred my peas unadorned. A shame, really - I quite like peas, but they were very definitely the weakest link in the epic dinner.