Give Peas a Chance

When I was a child, I really didn't like peas, not at all.  I'm not sure I ever had fresh peas; I know that we had tiny little Le Sueur peas from a can, and probably frozen peas on occasion too.  I liked almost all other vegetables, but something about peas just got to me.  I think perhaps it has to do with the way in which processing for canning or even freezing changes flavor and texture, because I finally discovered fresh peas in my adult life, and they are very different from that childhood memory of the hated vegetable. 

The other day I went to a Greenmarket in search of sour cherries, which were not in yet.  Despite the fact that we were about to go out of town yet again, I came home with strawberries and wild black raspberries, beautiful varieties of little summer squash,  a bunch of fresh mint, milk and cream from Ronnybrook dairy, and a couple of pounds of English peas in their shells.  G and I spent a companionable half hour shelling them while listening to Low, and while I pondered how to prepare them.  Should I make them in the French fashion with lettuce?  Lace them with some of that pungent mint? 

It was then that I thought of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. 

I think that even the most inveterate pea-hater could not fail to be moved by MFK Fisher's description of an afternoon spent with peas and loved ones in Switzerland, at her home Le Pâquis:   

We put a clean cloth, red and white, over one of the carpenters' tables, and we kicked wood curls aside to make room for our feet under the chairs brought up from the apartment in Vevey.  I set out tumblers, plates, silver, smooth, unironed napkins sweet from the meadow grass where they had dried.   
      While some of us bent over the dwarf-pea bushes and tossed the crisp pods into baskets, others built a hearth from stones and a couple of roof tiles lying about and made a lively little fire.  I had a big kettle with spring water in the bottom of it, just off simmering, and salt and pepper and a pat of fine butter to hand.   Then I put the bottles of Dezelay in the fountain, under the timeless spurt of icy mountain water, and ran down to be the liaison between the harvesters and my mother, who sat shelling peas from the basket on her lap into the pot between her feet, her fingers as intent and nimble as a lacemaker's.   
    I dashed up and down the steep terraces with the baskets, and my mother would groan and then hum happily when another one appeared, and below, I could hear my father and our friends cursing just as happily at their wry backs and their aching thighs, while the peas came off their stems and into the baskets with a small sound audible in that still high air, so many hundred feet above the distant and completely silent Léman.  It was suddenly almost twilight.  The last sunlight on the Dents du Midi was fire-rosy, with immeasurable coldness in it. 
    "Time, gentlemen, time," my mother called in an unrehearsed and astonishing imitation of a Cornish barmaid.
    They came in grateful hurry up the steep paths, almost nothing now in their baskets, and looks of smug success upon their faces.  We raced through the rest of the shelling, and then while we ate rolled prosciutto and drank Swiss bitters or brandy and soda or sherry, according to our various habits, I dashed like an eighteenth-century courier on a secret mission of utmost military importance, the pot cautiously braced in front of me, to the little hearth. 
    I stirred up the fire.  When the scant half-inch of water boiled, I tossed in the peas, a good six quarts or more, and slapped on the heavy lid as if a devil might get out.  The minute steam showed I shook the whole like mad.  Someone brought me a curl of thin pink ham and a glass of wine cold from the fountain.  Revivified, if that were any more possible, I shook the pot again. 
    I looked up at the terrace, a shambles of sawed beams, cement mixers, and empty sardine tins left from the workmen's lunches.  There sat most of the people in the world I loved, in a thin light that was pink with Alpen glow, blue with a veil of pine smoke from the hearth. Their voices sang with a certain
remoteness into the clear air, and suddenly from across the curve of the Lower Corniche a cow in Monsieur Rogivue's orchard moved her head among the meadow flowers and shook her bell in a slow melodious rhythm, a kind of hymn.  My father lifeted up his face at the sweet sound and, his fists all stained with green-pea juice, said passionately, "God, but I feel good!" I felt near to tears. 
    The peas were now done.  After one more shake I whipped off the lid and threw in the big pat of butter, which had a bas-relief of William Tell upon it.  I shook in salt, ground in pepper, and then swirled the pot over the low flames until Tell had disappeared. Then I ran like hell, up the path lined with candytuft and pinks, past the fountain where bottles shown promisingly though the crystal water, to the table. 
    Small brown roasted chickens lay on every plate, the best ones I have ever eaten, done for me that afternoon by Madame Doellenbach of the Vieux Vevey and not chilled since but cooled in their own intangibly delicate juices.  There was a salad of mountain lettuces.  There was honest bread.  There was plenty of limpid wine, the kind Brillat-Savarin said was like rock-water, tempting enough to make a hydrophobic drink.   Later there was cheese, an Emmenthaler and a smuggled Roblichon...
    ...And later still we walked dreamily away, along the Upper Corniche to a cafe terrace, where we sat watching fireworks far across the lake at Evian, and drinking cafe noir and a very fine fine. 
    But what really mattered, what piped the high unforgettable tune of perfection, were the peas, which came from their hot pot onto our thick china plates in a cloud, a kind of miasma, of everything that anyone could ever want from them, even in a dream.
        -- From "P is for Peas", An Alphabet for Gourmets

So I cooked our fresh peas simply, in their own steam, with salt and pepper and plenty of fresh butter.  Perhaps one day we will pick our own peas, and eat them on our own piece of land.  But for now, no peas have ever tasted so good to us, though we didn't pick them ourselves and cook them over a wood fire and eat them on a terrace in Switzerland, but did at the very least shell, cook and eat them here in our East Harlem apartment. 

Comments

[ZarahMaria]

What a great teaser for MFK Fisher - I really have to get some of her books soon. And peas, ah peas! Fresh, please, no other way - but that way, oh yum!

[Joe C]

Fresh peas do rule, and I think you're right -- our sainted mother seemed to like those pitiful canned peas although she resembled Mary Frances Kennedy in many other ways... Those damn things were inedible and I too refused to eat 'em.
Your sister in law is a pea fanatic, so the shelling is left to her whenever we can find the genuine article. The frozen organic version will do for a quick risotto (with a touch of lemon), however. This makes a very good side dish for salmon when fresh peas are unavailable.

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Peas tastes incredible with almost all type of meals but I prefer to use white beans instead only for aesthetic reasons.