GARDEN FRESH : The Little Peas

Regarding garden and kitchen chores, I’m happiest with grand gestures like whacking open pumpkins, pulling beets from the earth, lugging in armloads of dill. Some folks don’t mind diddly sorts of chores, such as hulling sunflower seeds, stemming elderberries and shelling weensy peas. You can’t fill your mouth with luscious treats like those if they’re meant to be seeded or stemmed or shelled.

But tiny things make beguiling eating. “Little peas,” the meaning of the French term petits pois , are high on the list of the most exquisite of edibles, up there with pomegranate seeds and caviar.

Now, the way I like to eat big fat garden peas is to cook them in their pods. I drop the pods in a skillet, barely cover them with water, add a lump of sweet butter and pinches of sugar and salt, and simmer them uncovered till they’re tender. Then I lift out the pods, boil down the stock until it’s the consistency of a light sauce, and pour it over the pods in a hot bowl.

Next, speaking to no one, I dive in, pulling a plump green pod through my teeth, gathering peas and succulent pod parts into a bite, tossing the remnants into a dish . . . and on to the next voluptuous mouthful.

When I tried this sensuous method with petits pois , the nubbins were lost. No way around it: The teenies must be popped from their pods. So I turn on Ella Fitzgerald and scat the chore away.

Actually, I don’t really mind because there’s a bonus in shelling peas: Tender pods make a delightful dish. Pull off the string, starting at whichever end seems to work best. Although you can simmer whole pods, they’re easier to eat when sliced the short way into strips (whatever width pleases). Simmer in an uncovered skillet in lightly salted water until tender-crisp. Serve sprinkled with cream--or fine shreds of a nutty cheese--and freshly ground white pepper.

*

The way to eat petits pois ? Purely. Simmer them in an uncovered skillet in barely enough lightly salted water to cover them. Drain (always saving the stock for soup), then add as much unsalted butter as you’ll permit yourself and a few grains of sugar, sea salt and freshly ground white pepper. Maybe a few grains of mace or nutmeg. Oh, I read in fancy cookbooks that you can combine petits pois with faux-pearl-size onions or balls of potatoes or carrots, and herbs such as chervil, summer savory, thyme and parsley. To me, their presence is distracting; their flavor clouds the clarity of the peas’. The one vegetable I do think adds to--rather than detracts from petits pois --is lettuce. Sometimes I toss in a few thin short ribbons of butterhead leaves. I enjoy their texture and look.

As a class, petits pois have the finest flavor of all peas, especially when home-grown. Home-grown petits pois are the sine qua non of peas--”the which than which there is no whicher,” as Gertrude Stein put it. Even peas from a superb farmers market can’t compare. You see, the sugar in peas starts converting to starch the moment the pod leaves the vine--the same as it does in the kernels of old-fashioned sweet corn once the ear has been picked. But unlike sweet corn, no whiz-bangs have been performed by botanists to make peas’ sugar stable--there are no super-sweet or sugary enhanced or sweet gene peas. So even if you must raise them in a container (at least five-gallon--better a half barrel), and even if your harvest won’t amount to more than one heavenly serving, give yourself the pleasure of petits pois as Mother Nature intended you to eat them.

Petits pois want the same culture as garden peas. Essential are lots of sunshine and good drainage--when you water, the water doesn’t pool on top of the earth but is quickly received by it. Still, the soil should consist of enough organic matter (compost and manure) so the soil retains it and stays moist.

For maximum growth, treat the seeds with an inoculant, charcoal dust-like bacteria beneficial to legumes (directions are on the package). If your soil is on the acid side--if dandelions, sorrel, strawberries and azaleas go crazy in it--dig in a veil of wood ashes and/or oyster shell lime (from the nursery).

Peas of all sorts are vulnerable to disease. If this is your first time with peas, ask a gardening neighbor if there have been problems. To forestall mildew, water at ground level--water standing on leaves invites disease--and provide pea sticks for the vines to climb up, which ensures circulation of air (even though the catalogue may say vines need no support). Pea sticks are any sort of support the length of the vines (the catalogue will tell you how long). Pea sticks also make it possible for you to admire the charming leaves, tendrils, white blossoms and translucent pods of your plants.

*

You can sow peas now in the mountains and along the coast--wherever there are a long two months before summer’s heat (peas are a cool weather crop). In hot-summer-balmy-winter climates, sow peas in autumn. In fact, you can sow quick-to-mature cultivars of peas in early September all over Southern California. Sow petits pois seeds about two inches apart, pressing them an inch into the ground. Poke in enough pea sticks so every vine can find one.

Then you must guard against all the other petits pois appreciators out there. You can thwart most birds and crafty quail by dangling a big yellow bird scare balloon a few inches above the sticks and move it every few days. Against raccoons, ring the patch with a barrier of the thorniest stuff you can lay your hands on--raccoons hate getting scratched. Rabbits? Deer? Try Hinder repellent, ammonium soaps of fatty acids. Once field mice start nibbling, there’s nothing for it but to remove the pea sticks, cover the patch with a lid of half-inch hardware cloth until the seedlings are well up out of the ground, then remove the lid and put back the pea sticks.

Harvest petits pois when the peas in the pods are around 3/16-inch wide. Not infant peas, they’ve been bred to fulfill their potentials of texture and flavor at so small a size.

Still, if at this point in your life a farmers market is your only access to these jewels, be the first one in line when the market opens, then run home with your pods and cook them immediately. And what music will you listen to when you shell your little peas?

Sources

Fresh pods: Farmers markets.

Seeds and supplies: High-yielding Waverex from the Cook’s Garden, Box 535, Londonderry, Vt. 05148. Precovell (resistant to fusarium wilt and top yellows) from Shepherd’s Garden Seeds, 6116 Highway 9, Felton, Calif. 95018. Argona (resistant to common wilt), inoculant, Hinder rabbit and deer repellent, Terror-Eyes balloons from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Foss Hill Road, Albion, Me. 049109731.