Pea Chutney Recipe

Pea Chutney Recipe

This sweet and satisfying pea chutney is a great raw food dish to mix in with green leaves and make into a salad. It is sugar-free but quite sweet tasting if you let it sit overnight. It is protein-rich because the main ingredients: green peas and cashew nuts are both high in protein. It is also high in chlorophyll, very tasty, cheap and healthy. This quickly became one of my favourite raw food dishes even though I initially was sceptical about it. But the fatty taste of olive oil and the surprising sweetness of peas is a very enjoyable combination, and fresh cilantro gives it a 'salsa-like' edge.

Cost: £2.50 (GBP)
Prep time: 30 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: one soup bowl

Ingredients:

Green peas from frozen: 200g (250ml), melted
Cashew nuts: 50g, soaked in water for 4h and rinsed well
Fresh cilantro (coriander): 50g, or a large bunch.
Spring onions: three, chopped
Olive oil: 80-100ml, or to taste
Fresh mild chilli: one, chopped fine
Mustard seeds: 2 teasp, whole
Tomato: one medium-size
Lime juice: 2 tbsp
Pink Himalayan salt or sea salt: to taste
Black pepper: to taste

Directions:

1. The day before preparing this recipe: take the frozen peas out of the freezer to melt and soak the cashew nuts for 4h. Alternatively you can place the peas in hot water to melt quicker. Note that using unsoaked cashew nuts will make them much more difficult to digest.
2. Wash all the ingredients and carefully separate the cilantro (coriander) leaves from the stems. Discard the stems.
3. Process all the ingredients into paste in a food processor, except tomato, mustard seeds, and only a little bit of salt, pepper and red chilli.
4. Chop the tomato into chunks and mix into the paste. Add mustard seeds whole. Taste and carefully add salt, lime juice, black pepper, red chilli and olive oil to taste.
5. Garnish with red chilli and a few cilantro leaves.
6. Serve with lettuce as a main dish, or as a side to any warm meal.

Taste vs. Health in This Green Pea Chutney Recipe

It seems that the olive oil in quite large quantity is crucial for this dish to taste nice. However, I try to get away with less olive oil because too much seems to make me sleepy! The 100ml called for in this recipe is a good amount to use but you can reduce it if you prefer a lighter dish and slightly increase the amount if you prefer a fattier taste.

Optional Additional Ingredients

1 teasp kelp (for health reasons), 1 teasp of spirulina (for health reasons), garlic oil, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, coriander seeds.

You could also have this as more like a 'pea salsa' by adding more tomatoes, chillies, lime juice and chopped onion.

Crucial for the Success of This Pea Chutney Recipe

It is important to remove all the stems from the cilantro and use the leaves only, even if it takes a bit of time. Using the stems will result in a too fibrous texture.

For the best results, allow the chutney to sit in a fridge overnight before eating, as the taste will be much sweeter and nicer the second day.

Money Saving Tips

Even though this recipe is already very cheap to make, you can reduce the cost further by leaving out the cashew nuts and replacing with more peas. Also, the less olive oil you use the cheaper it will be to make this dish, however, be careful as the olive oil is essential for the taste in this dish.

Although I first thought this recipe uninteresting, I made anyway it as a side dish for something else I was making and was pleasantly surprised! The result was a lot sweeter than I would have thought! So it became a favourite raw food dish of mine, when mixed 50-50 with lettuce. This recipe was inspired by the 'Pea and Cashew Chutney' and 'Pea Guacamole' recipes in the 'New Food for Thought' cookbook, the best vegetarian cookbook of all times!

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