cook: pea salad

Saturday lunch of a Seafood Louie salad while while my husband baked the birthday cupcakes, dark chocolate with dark chocolate buttercream frosting for a neighbors' birthday party.      

I had volunteered to make a Broadway Pea Salad to go with pulled pork sliders for the party’s potluck. I had eaten this salad at someone’s party and loved loved loved it and so scoured the internet to discover that a Seattle restaurant, Clinkerdagger serves a Broadway Pea Salad that's very popular among its diners. Super simple salad to make. Just thaw frozen green petite peas. Chop onion finely and some water chestnuts in quarters, combine with mayonnaise, sour cream, white pepper, and salt and then fold in the peas to make a vegetarian version. I've seen this salad with grated cheddar cheese (yuck) or tiny cubes of ham, but I prefer the original recipe with crumbled bacon, which I add to the salad just before serving.                        

 

I don't measure ingredients precisely when I cook these days and might have used a bit too much mayonnaise. But use a couple tablespoons enough to coat the ingredients.

 

I had forgotten to use white pepper (I had used black pepper)and sour cream called for in the original recipe, but I did roast bacon (the easy clean-up way).

I was in a hurry to get to the clay studio and covered the salad sans bacon with plastic wrap and stuck in the fridge. And then before the party, crumbled all that bacon above, folded in half and then sprinkled the other half on top of the salad. And forgot to take a picture of the finished dish. Luckily, I had bought two bags of peas and still had water chestnuts and 4 strips of bacon leftover from the first batch to make a half batch on this leisurely Sunday.          

 

My neighbor, Cecilia said she normally does not like green peas, but that she liked my salad. And so I shared the other half of my second pea salad. I made this once also for a family celebration, and a sister-in-law raved over this pea salad. Make this salad, and you'll see.