From the Pantry Bookshelf
A dish of apple sauce might look a little out of place next to a bowl of peas and browned onions. In the 1984 printing of Het Nieuwe Haagse Kookboek, though, apple purée is among the suggested sides for kapucijners, a Dutch field pea with an earthy flavour. A little fruit can change the character of a bite. Give it its own dish and you can decide how often you reach for it.
Start with the peas you have
The Hague cookbook gives freshly shelled kapucijners their own entry, separate from ordinary garden peas. The dried ones turn up a couple of pages later in a section on pulses. That difference still helps when shopping. A bag of dried peas needs preparation before dinner. A jar of prepared peas gets you straight to deciding what to serve with them.
HAK’s jarred kapucijners are packed in water with salt. Follow the label’s directions and taste the peas before adding seasoning of your own. You may also see jars labelled Veldertjes. HAK uses that name for its young kapucijners, which it processes after harvest without drying the peas first. HAK’s notes on Veldertjes
Choose something savoury
Browned onions are a good first choice. They bring sweetness of their own, with a savoury edge that makes the peas feel more substantial. Keep them in a little heap on the plate and try a forkful of peas with a strand of onion. You can get some sweetness into one forkful and leave the next one plain.
If your plate already has soft vegetables, add a little crunch on the side. A few broken pieces of crisp bacon give you a smaller, saltier bite than a forkful of soft onions. For a vegetable supper, try a slice of toasted bread. It can pick up a little onion or catch the juice of whatever else is sharing the plate.
Give the fruit its own dish
The cookbook also suggests rhubarb purée. The two fruits offer a choice. Start with apple sauce if you want something mellow, or use a tart rhubarb compote if you have one and would like more acidity. Taste the fruit on its own first. A particularly sweet apple sauce may be enough in a thin swipe on the edge of a forkful.
On a shared table, a small dish and a clean serving spoon let everyone try the pairing. Spoon a little fruit onto the side of your plate, leaving space between it and the warm peas. A small taste of apple with two or three peas is enough to see whether you like the combination.
Make it supper
Warm peas, browned onions and apple sauce make a good starting plate. If you’re serving something roasted alongside, try the peas with a bit of the roasting juices before adding any fruit. With a plate of dressed greens, the fruit can go beside the peas so the dressing and the apple each keep their place. And if the little dish of apple sauce goes untouched after the first bite, there’s always tomorrow’s porridge.
Bookshelf source — F. M. Stoll and W. H. de Groot, Het Nieuwe Haagse Kookboek (71st printing, Elsevier, 1984), pp. 233 and 235.