Ode To Peas
Peas don’t get much respect. Last spring, when I received my five-pound bag from Johnny’s Selected Seeds filled with wrinkled nuggets labeled “Sugar Ann, Snap Peas,” I was unimpressed, but excited to get something in the thawed ground. I planted about half the garden in peas, and almost instantly began to regret it. The weather warmed. The days lengthened. And the massive pea plants just seemed to be taking up space. I was poised to rip them out. But then, as if they sensed my disdain, they began pumping out a seemingly endless supply of juicy, viridian treats that sustained my wife and me for weeks, with plenty left to give to friends, family, and neighbors, and to stock our freezer with purees and blanched peas.
These horticultural Rodney Dangerfields (Remember they were the model for Mendel’s study of genetics.)—are truly the workhorse of the garden. “We always had peas in the garden,” said Richard Hendrickson, a farmer, weather observer, and historian in Bridgehampton. “They were very, very important as the first spring vegetable, and I say they were super good. There is nothing closer to a farmer’s housewife than good fresh garden peas. And they tasted the best after a long, dry winter of nothing more than pancakes, salt pork, and bacon.”
Packed with protein, vitamins A, B, C, and zinc, Pisum sativum has been a staple food since ancient times. Until fairly recently, people dried peas before eating them, grinding them into pea porridge in Europe and pea dal in India. According to the Oxford Companion to Food, “a sudden vogue for eating immature peas fresh, which was a novel procedure,” peaked at the end of the 17th century. Parisian ladies nibbled a few small peas (petits pois) as a digestive before bed. Snap peas and their flatter, broader cousins, snow peas, are the most popular types. Their entire pod, as well as the peas within, can be eaten. (The French called them mange-tout for this reason.) Shelling peas are prized for the well-formed, sweet peas within and the shell is discarded.
Timing seems to be everything. Peas that stay on the vine too long trade their milky sweetness for a grassy blandness, and peas begin to convert the sugar in their pods to starch within a couple of hours of picking. Plan to eat or cook them shortly after leaving the garden or farmstand.
Perhaps their biggest selling point is versatility. Some chefs chop them up in salads. Others stir-fry the tender shoots. Kids eat them raw as a snack. Fans of 1950s Americana might enjoy tuna noodle casserole with peas. “By the end of the season, you get tired of it and you start to try using them in every way—soups, stir-fries, salads,” said Hiroyuki Hamada of Springs as he cradled and munched a pea from his garden. “By that time I can’t wait to get rid of them.”
