This healthy Grey Peas and Bacon recipe makes a warming supper dish or an accompaniment for faggots. It can also be blended to make a smooth baby puree. Pronounced, and often written 'Peys', dried peas, most traditionally Maple Peas but now sometimes green or yellow dried peas, are re-hydrated and boiled with chopped onion and usually barley and shreds of bacon this age old family favourite recipe from the Midlands which is a great supper dish. The recipe from 'Good cheer, the romance of food and feasting' (1911) by Frederick Hackwood has; "A soup made of grey peas and bacon was formerly given away to their customers by all Black Country innkeepers on the Shrove Tuesday, or Fasten's E'en as it was sometimes called." Now you can make this warming recipe for you and all your family.


Ingredients

• 1 lb dried grey peas 
• 1 large sliced onion
• 3 oz Pearl Barley 
• Salt and Pepper
• 1 lb bacon chopped in to small pieces 

How to make Grey Peas and Bacon

1. Soak the peas and pearl barley overnight
2. Place the soaked peas and pearl barley in a saucepan with the onion, previously browned bacon and salt and pepper.
3. Cook slowly for three hours. (The bacon is chopped into small pieces before browning).
4. To make a baby puree simply blend in a blender. 

Recipe from - www.foodsofengland.co.uk Original Recipe in Marjorie Cashmore's 'A Feast of Memories: Black Country Food and Life at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century', published in 1986 by Westwood Press.