Sprinter. That’s the situation the Dirt Candy menu currently finds itself in. Spring dishes are slowly coming on, winter dishes are slowly going away, but right now it’s in transition and so we’re half spring and half winter: Sprinter.

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But it being spring, every young woman finds her thoughts turning to one thing: peas. Technically a fruit, peas are one of the first signs of spring, but for some reason the most popular pea dish, pea soup, is thick, heavy and usually served in the winter. So I wanted to do something new, I wanted to make a pea soup that woke you up the way spring shakes the dust from your bones and gets you up out of your winter cave. I wanted a pea soup that was light and refreshing. So please allow me to introduce you to Dirt Candy’s pea soup.

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I knew I wanted to do a new take on pea soup for spring, but I didn’t know where to begin. The first thing I was thinking about was that I wanted to do something with wasabi peas, but I couldn’t come up with anything that sounds good. But ginger and wasabi go well together and suddenly the soup started taking on an Asian twist. Most Japanese soups are clear and I realized that I could make a clear, lightly scented broth. I wanted to give it a little more depth, so I put some garden pea flan in the middle of the bowl (the flan comes in both a vegan and non-vegan version). You pour the broth over the flan and as you eat, it slowly dissolves into the broth, thickening it slightly and adding more depth and layers of flavor as you go.

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To give it a bit of ginger, I pickled baby potatoes, baby pink potatoes and baby purple potatoes for about a week in a mixture of rice vinegar and ginger.

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And for the wasabi, I took pea shoot leaves, dusted them with a wasabi powder,  and dehydrated them for about a week as well. I recommend eating them like a potato chip before you pour your broth.

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The broth itself is made of spring peas, pea shoots, sugar snap peas and Kaffir lime leaves. And the final result is a pea soup that runs through your body like electricity, delivering a subtle, delicate flavor of peas that wakes you up rather than putting you to sleep.

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