Here's his enlightening explanation for readers of Postcards from Hell's Kitchen:
Mushy peas are basically processed peas which are cooked for a long time with a little sugar and bicarb to make them go mushy.
A processed pea (I only discovered recently) is a pea once dried and reconstituted. They sell over here in cans and it's all we ate in my plebby working class upbringing.
They do have a different flavour to ordinary canned peas and they are bigger.
For years, mushy peas have been available in fish and chip shops and usually the nicest ones come from there.
I've been past the place but the line to eat there was so big, we didn't go in. Tried branded fish and it wasn't much to write home about and neither were the peas.
I took 2 cans of Batchelor's mushy peas over to Susan in either 98 or 03 and she never ventured to even open the cans. I tease her that when they demolished House of Chan in Chinatown, those cans are still there in the debris / foundations of the new building on that site.
I checked the calories and they aren't that much higher 100 gms gives 87 cals and frozen peas are about 65.
The extra does come from the sugar.
A lot of these old dishes are out of fashion and in some ways modern times has overtaken them.
When these things were common fodder for ornery folk, they would put a big batch of the dried peas on to cook for maybe 4 hours on a low heat and a stew in a pot on another.
Now, the cost of the energy to cook all this stuff makes something cheap and basic too damned expensive, the power to cook them costs more than the ingredients. Something I found amusing when the credit crunch hit, because TV was full of these ideas of using a cheaper cut of meat, but all cheaper cuts are cheap because they take a long time to prepare or cook or are (like liver) not to people's taste.
So now you know...
Editor's Note: You can read more of Keith's blogging goodness from across the pond on The Sturdy Soapbox. He calls attention to the following Wikipedia reference on Mushy Peas.
