Pass the Peas, Please - October 10, 2011
Greetings to all the wonderful friends and fans of Rosalie Serving Cookbooks. If there is one thing I have learned about cooking, it is simply this...there are usually one or two food items that most everybody hates.
It could be the black olives on the pizza, the mushrooms or onions on the burger, the raisins in the cookies, or more likely, the dreaded peas, fixed alone or in anything.
My husband tells the story of when he was growing up and how his mother was insistent on her children eating everything on their plate.
He would simply wait until his mother was not watching, and then scraped the peas off into a 2-inch hollow ridge below the table top, which also served as a brace to the table itself. The brace was lower on one side, and easy enough to stuff in any contents desired. It wasn't until years later, when my mother-in-law decided she needed a new kitchen table that she discovered a green dried paste lining the under brace.
I think we can all sympathize to the taste of the canned mushy peas, but also admit that the fresh frozen peas of recent years are a much better version.
Take for instance the awesome recipe of Vermicelli with Peas & Pancetta. This recipe features Pancetta, and Italian salt cured bacon, seasoned with such spices as nutmeg, fennel, peppercorns and dried ground peppers. It is then dried for at least 3 months. It's rendering goes right into the creamy sauce, giving the whole dish a most pleasant flavor.
The fresh frozen peas are tossed into the dish along with heavy cream and cheese, giving it just a little crunch of goodness. Put it all together and you have a classic pasta with peas dish that even peas-haters will have to love.
I say, cook it up tonight, and let your taste-buds go crazy with delight! You may even have to say…"pass the peas, please."
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