Experimental

Here's a weird little one for you.

I haven't been doing much shopping, as I've just got loads of stuff in stock, so rather than what I've always done - which is to make a weekly menu in advance then go out and buy all the stuff for it - I've been just rustling things up each night as I go, out of whatever suggests itself to me of what I have in the house. But as I'm using a lot of new and slightly off-beat ingredients this means there's quite a bit of invention going on. Which is fun.

I soaked some black badger peas, intending to have them on Sunday, but then decided to do roast veg and sausages instead. But by Tuesday the peas, having been soaked now, needed to be used fairly sharpish. I looked around for fresh stuff to put with it and there was some chicken breast (from Whisby's in Horncastle), a savoy cabbage and some spring onions (local farm, 40p and 30p respectively). If in doubt, bung them all in together and see what happens!

So I boiled the peas up with a bit of baking soda to help them soften, adding sliced cabbage leaves to the pot about half way through. That gave me this:

I then started off softening the chopped spring onions in the frying pan, then cooked the chicken a bit before adding in the peas and cabbage.

All was going okay so far, but it was all a bit too 'al dente' and I felt like it needed some kind of sauce, so I put in about a pint of chicken stock and some salt and pepper. I still thought the peas needed to be softer, so I put in some baking soda and then, remembering the tradition of eating these peas with vinegar, I splashed a load of that in too, which helped the baking soda to work its stuff as well. In the end it came out like this:

I'm not sure if you can tell the difference from these pictures, but the second one was much mushier and juicier.

I served it up to the kids with no small amount of apprehension, and they did come to the table with doubtful looks on their faces. After I'd had the first mouthful though, my fears were allayed - how could anyone not like this? And surely enough, the kids were both soon going up for second helpings and saying we must do this again. Result!

Now, I've no idea what to call this - suggestions are welcome! I expect it's pretty close to the sort of thing our ancestors would've eaten, though as the bean/pulse group has been largely left to the veggies and vegans of the world, it's not so often these days that you'd come across a meal based on them that includes chicken. But I'll bet this has enough protein in it to replace any bodybuilder milkshakes!