Petits Pois a la Francaise

Name: Petits Pois a la Francaise
Total time: 15 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: Frozen peas; Lean cooked ham; Unsalted butter; Iceberg lettuce; Spring onions; Chicken stock

Petits Pois a la Francaise, plated as one serving.

197 kcal a serving, against 274 for the traditional version. That is 77 kcal off, or 28%, with 14.3g of protein. Serves 4. 15 minutes.

What the traditional version is

A massive pile of peas, slowly braised with a whole head of lettuce, loads of spring onions and thick, fatty lardons. A huge block of butter is stirred in at the end to create a rich, emulsified sauce. The whole thing sits in a pool of salty, fatty chicken stock. It's cooked for a surprisingly long time until the peas are entirely soft and the lettuce has completely collapsed into the buttery liquid.

What changed, and what each change costs

150g of lardons down to 100g of lean cooked ham

Lardons throw off a massive pool of pork fat into the broth, which mixes with the butter to create a dense, heavy sauce. Lean ham gives you the necessary salty, meaty bite without turning the cooking liquor into a greasy oil slick.

What it costs you. You lose the crispy, rendered fat edges that only proper pork belly can give you.

50g of butter down to 15g

The traditional dish relies on a giant chunk of butter to thicken the sauce and coat the vegetables. I use a tiny bit right at the end just to glaze the peas, letting the reduced chicken stock do the heavy lifting for the flavour.

What it costs you. The broth is significantly thinner. It sits at the bottom of the plate rather than clinging to every single pea like a double cream. You'll need a spoon to drink it.

What goes in it

The ingredients, without the quantities. The weights are what the figures below are computed from, and they are in the book.

Frozen peas
Lean cooked ham
Unsalted butter
Iceberg lettuce
Spring onions
Chicken stock

How it starts

Prepare the vegetables first.
Get a large frying pan hot.
Pour the chicken stock straight into the pan and bring it up to a rapid, rolling boil.

The rest of the method, and every weight, is in Authentic-ish French.

The numbers

Per serving	Traditional	Lightened
Calories	274	197
Protein	16.2g	14.3g
Fat	14g	5.8g
Saturated fat	7.5g	2.6g
Carbohydrate	22.6g	22.9g
Protein per 100 kcal	5.9g	7.2g

Every figure is computed from the recipe's own weighed ingredient list against public food composition databases. The appendix in Authentic-ish French prints the exact database row used for each ingredient, so any number here can be checked. How every number is computed sets out the method.

Allergens. milk.

The method is in the book

What you've got is a bright and savoury plate of spring vegetables. A rich, heavy stew is a different dish and you know where to find it. The lean ham provides exactly the right amount of salt to balance the sweet peas, and the chicken stock keeps everything moist and deeply flavoured. You absolutely miss the thick, buttery sauce of the original, but you gain a side dish you can actually eat a massive bowl of without feeling completely ruined. I serve this with roast chicken or plain white fish, and it brings a brilliant hit of colour and salt to the table.

The quantities and the method for this dish are in Authentic-ish French, along with 54 more. Buy the paperback