Vegetable Patch: The Princess and the Pea Pod

Sugarsnap pea pods have become my go-to, crunch-on, munch-on food in the past few weeks since they’ve been appearing regularly in my weekly farm share. I’m finding they’re a great way to get some green goodness when there’s not much time to spend preparing an entire proper salad.  So today’s lunch-for-a-princess consisted of pea pods, baby carrots and some white bean dip on a couple of corn thins, which took about a minute to prepare (taking everything out of the fridge) and maybe 7 minutes to eat, which was 5 minutes more than I had. 

I looked around for some sugarsnap pea pod recipes, but nothing really appealed—why would you want to cook them when they’re so delicious right from the garden?

The other kind of edible pea pod is the snow pea, which apparently is one of the earliest known cultivated vegetables, dating from 12,000 years ago in Thailand. (Does anyone know how someone might figure this out?  Snow pea fossils, perhaps?).  It’s familiar to many of us from Chinese and other oriental cuisines, and to my mind tastes best when it’s barely cooked in a stir-fry or soup.

On the other hand, garden or English peas, which you need to shell from the pod, are quite versatile and pair nicely with herbs such as mint.  A cold fresh pea soup is a real treat, not just for its flavor, but also for its lovely bright green color. 

My friend Dearbhal (that’s pronounced DER-val) who lives outside of Limerick, Ireland, posted this lovely classic recipe for petits pois à la française —if you don’t have access to fresh petit pois (tiny peas), regular garden peas would be an acceptable substitution.

 Petits pois à la française:

 3 small spring onions, finely sliced

3 tablespoons unsalted butter (maybe try with a little less)

1 drop oil

1 Boston (Bibb) lettuce, shredded

2 cups petits pois, fresh or frozen

1/2 cup hot chicken or vegetable stock

Cook the spring onions in the butter and oil until soft. Stir in the shredded lettuce, and when it is wilted add the peas and stock.

Cook at a robust simmer, uncovered, until everything is tender and the liquid reduced.