Is it seasonal yet? - Part II
From the precipice of springtime, we seemed to have beaten a rather wintery retreat. Although it seems we may have turned a corner today. Produce, though, waits for no one. If Asparagus’ arrival 8 weeks early is anything to go by, the summery end of spring fruit and veg will be upon us before we know what’s happened. So, after last week's journey through the Rolodex of early spring veg, I wanted to continue my assessment of the most readily available of what's to come.
Before I launch headlong into this again, I want to be honest with you, and myself, and eradicate any bucolic sense of green and pleasant lands or some smallholding type idyll. There is a futile element to this. For instance, the best, most affordable peas you’ll likely eat each year (both in terms of time and money, for the podded pea requires a toil and a toll) are frozen. The same can often be said for broad beans. Both of which are arguably at their greatest when cooked slowly for quite a long time. Fennel and courgette are both, in their own way, underrated and overrated at the same time. Radishes are pretty good up and down the price/quality spectrum. So why bother?
I suppose on the one hand, and as touched on in last week's newsletter, it is good to remind oneself that these things are seasonal. The freezer cabinet of every supermarket is stocked with petit pois and garden peas from January through to New Year's Eve, the same supermarket shelves will similarly hold almost everything else discussed below for much of the year, but by reframing the context of the pea, even if we buy and use the frozen variety (which are, of course, very good, picked and frozen at peak ripeness as they are), one is reminded of what is out and about alongside the pea in its natural season. And by undertaking that little exercise, we can better visualise peas and broad beans and courgettes and fennel and chervil and parsley and mint being cooked down together and served with young fresh cheese or even alongside some grilled spring lamb. We’ve become de-contextualised in so much of our eating, so we must re-contextualise. We must haul ourselves out of the ruts we’ve been lured into. We must remember that there is more to life than boiled peas rolling about a plate unfettered. We must treat them as if they are more scarce than they are, relish them with their seasonal companions, and treat them with much more versatility than we might have been encouraged to by those before us.
It’s not very profound, really, but much like the daily affirmations that the wellness gang so espouse; running seasonal versions of affirmations for our produce might just recenter us, renew our intentions for the next month or so, remind us of things that we might not have cooked with for a year, help us recall dishes that had become second nature last spring or summer, but have been forgotten in the cloddy malaise of the recent winter.
As mentioned last week, both Eat The Seasons and Natoora are useful tools for just jogging the culinary memory of what is on the way in terms of produce. Or read on below, it is far less comprehensive, marginally less useful, but hopefully will add something to your affirmations and intentions when it comes to how you might cook for the next few months.
Peas - be it French Jardiniere, Italian vignarola, or British mushy peas, I love a cooked pea. Apart from a sweet young pea stolen straight from the pod, I would say that all my favourite pea consumption has been of peas cooked for upwards of half an hour. Sorry, I’ve just read that back and I sound like a tosser. The young peas and their pods’ thing is pretentious out of context, but actually quite mundane when taken in the context of standing working your nails to almost bleeding in a restaurant kitchen as you prise open and pod box after five-kilo-box of peas in peak season. Much like putting filled pasta or chips on the menu, English peas in spring and early summer illicit an excitement in customers that means, as a chef, you can always pod more peas, hence the sneaky treat, hence the pleasure amongst the pain. A raw podded pea is wonderful, a pop of grassy sweetness in a salad, for instance, but I genuinely think the best way with a bang-in-season pea is to cook them for quite a while. Below is a recipe for Vignarola that I implore you to try if you ever spy peas and broad beans in their pods for sale. The other contender for the pea dish of the year is Risi e Bisi - literally rice and peas in Italian. A Venetian spring treat, it should be soupier than a risotto, and, to contradict my previous waffle, should be made with the youngest, sweetest, and freshest peas you can find. I tend to sweat a chopped onion with some salt in oil until it has completely given up, then add a handful of carnaroli rice per person, then enough boiled water to just cover the rice, then simmer it, stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes before adding my podded peas and cooking until the rice is cooked and I have a loose soupy risotto in my pan (probably a further 10 minutes, and remember, you can add more water as you go). Grated parmesan and mint added right at the end are yin and yang to the sweet peas and rich soupy rice.
Broad beans - liberating a young broad bean from its fleecy bed is a rare joy. Where, as a chef, I could end up resenting the podding of large boxes of peas, I would relish the podding of the broad beans. Once the thumb has found its way into the pod, the pleasing blankety slide down the inside of the pod to flick out the four or five beans residing within is enough to make the world seem a better place. A suggestion that the podded broad beans are then best when submitted to a second podding was always tough to take, removing the pale green outer layer to free the bright green inner bean is a respectful and celebratory chore, but not one that I bother with at home. Again, the broad bean responds well to long slow cooking, the vignarola above is testament enough to that, but my favourite treat with a bowl of just liberated broad beans is to simply smash them in a pestle and mortar with lemon juice, oil, salt, black pepper and parmesan. This can be spread on toast, tossed through with pasta, or used as a slurry on which to sit fresh mozzarella (or the dreaded burrata). On a weekend away in Norfolk a few years ago, we managed to snaffle a load of broad beans for cheap from a farm shop. Later that day, whilst getting some charcoal hot for a barbecue, we tossed the whole broad bean pods into the fire and let them blister and burn against the hot coals. Podding and eating the steamed beans, lightly smoky from their smoking jacket, a cold beer and some crab on toast in hand, now that was a way to celebrate a British ingredient at its peak.
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