Tips on
Fresh Peas
Above All, Eat Them ASAP
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- To get one-half cup of
shelled peas, you’ll need to start
with about one pound of peas in the pod.
The simplest, though not the most
elegant, way to serve them is to steam
them in their pods, salt and butter the
whole things, and let each diner pop open
the shells and remove the peas with teeth
and tongue.
- The earliest peas
don’t need to be cooked at all.
Mature shelling peas, on the other hand,
aren’t worth eating fresh, asserts
Janet Fletcher in More Vegetables,
Please (Harlow & Ratner,
Emeryville, Calif., 1992). "Nothing
you can do will make them taste good;
you’re better off with frozen petite
peas," Fletcher maintains.
- Patricia Wells, writing in Patricia Wells at Home in
Provence:
Recipes Inspired by Her Farmhouse in
France (Scribner, New York, 1996),
offers this word of advice: "The
secret to maintaining the true green pea
color is to blanch the peas and then
refresh them in cold water, thus
‘setting’ the chlorophyl. The
refreshing ice bath also helps maintain
their crunch. The addition of mint to the
blanching water is a small
‘tip’ but one that – like
so many minor cooking trucs –
makes the difference between a dish
that’s flat and one-dimensional and
one that is layered with nuanced
flavors."
- Alice Waters, in Chez Panisse Vegetables
(Harper Collins, New York, 1996),
recommends not wasting any time getting
peas from market to serving plate.
"Green peas are unforgiving if they
are not rushed from the field to the
market," she writes. "They
start losing their natural sugars after
harvest, but this can be slowed down if
they are cooled immediately." And
she does mean immediately. "If
possible peas should be kept cool on the
way home," Waters writes.
- M.F.K. Fisher probably
wouldn’t be troubled with tough peas
if the ambiance was right. "The best
way to east fresh [peas] is to be alive
on the right day," she advises,
"with the men picking and the women
shelling, and everybody capering in the
sweet early summer weather, and the big
pot of water boiling and the table set
with little cool roasted chickens and
pitchers of white wine." Coming back
to earth, Fisher adds, "So….how
often does this happen?"
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