A dish that combines two childhood tastes in one, what a delight!
Each one of us has this memory of picking a pea pod and eating those first peas of the year. Sweet, delicious and soft. That first taste of spring.
Then Laban jameed, the best grandmother’s mansaf, of your mothers comforting ruz bil laban. We all long for those winter days where the family gather around a dish of laban, the quintessence of Palestine’s flavours. Wild, animal, intense and refined. An explosion of taste so strong your taste buds struggle to cope.
What better than to twist those tastes into one spring dish, a light starter or a main vegetarian course for lovers of Palestine.
Ingredients
3 kg fresh peas, which will give you 1,200 gr of peeled peas
100 gr liquid cream
150 gr olive oil
1 ball of laban jameed
Juice of 1 lemon
15 gr of coarse Palestinian dead sea salt
200 gr labaneh
Method
1. Peel the peas
2. Boil 2 liters water with the salt
3. Put the 1 kg of peas to boil, leaving 200 gr of peas raw for decoration
4. Boil the peas for 8 minutes from the moment water starts boiling again
5. Remove the peas in a colander and cool quickly with cold water.
6. Blend in a mixer or with a hand held blender the cooked peas, the cream, 75 gr olive oil, 100 gr of the water the peas boiled in and the juice of 1 lemon.
7. Once well smoothly blended, you are ready to serve.
8. In a wide deep bowl, spoon three tablespoons of the pea cream.
9. Make a quenelle of labaneh and place in the center of the cream
10. Drizzle with olive oil
11. With a small grater, grate the laban jameed over the dish. For the grating to work well, it is better to freeze the laban jameed ball for 15 minutes prior to grating
12. Decorate with a few of the raw peas