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<\/a><\/p>\nI would like to tell you that I bought my peas at the farmers\u2019 market, and that I shucked each one by hand, and that it was a true, starry-eyed labor of love, pod after pod after pod after pod, because it\u2019s spring, and people are supposed to eat fresh peas in spring. But I haven\u2019t seen any peas at our market, and I didn\u2019t feel like waiting, so I bought a one-pound bag in the freezer aisle at the grocery store. I totally cheated, and I am not sorry. I needed some peas.<\/p>\n
Maybe you hate peas, or maybe you tolerate them, or maybe you like them enough to feel like crying if you don\u2019t consume a large quantity of them between the months of March and June. I\u2019m willing to go out on a limb and say that, whoever you are, you should try a little dish called peas with prosciutto, preferably the recipe from Italian Easy<\/i><\/a>, by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers. Italians have a way with peas, which is to say: they cook them for a long<\/span> time. Stay with me here. Go get some peas, and then cook them slowly in butter and scallions and garlic, until they go almost olive green. Then top them with prosciutto and let the whole thing hang out for five minutes or so, until the prosciutto twists and curls in the heat, letting loose its salt and fat and flavor and funk. What you\u2019ll have then are some serious peas, some gutsy peas, peas without apology.<\/p>\n Until recently, I was under the impression that peas were to be cooked very little, if at all. It would have never occurred to me to use the words \u201cpea\u201d and \u201colive green\u201d in the same sentence, except in the context of something deeply regrettable. My grandparents\u2019 generation cooked the daylights out of its peas (and pretty much everything else), and we learned our lesson. Our peas were to be bright green, and when you closed your teeth around one, it was supposed to give way with a small, cheerful pop. But then I met my friend Francis<\/a>, who has great respect for the olive green pea. He reminded me that peas are legumes. They\u2019re like young beans, basically. When they\u2019re newly picked, they\u2019re filled with sugar, but as they age – which they do with great speed – those sugars turn to starch. As with other legumes, if you want them to be sweet and tender and not starchy, you\u2019ve got to cook them until they taste sweet and tender and not starchy, and that can take a while. Francis says it<\/a> a lot better<\/a> that I can, but basically, unless you\u2019ve got some very fresh specimens on your hands, you would do well to give them a thorough cooking.<\/p>\n That said, frozen peas are a special case. You can go either way with them. Because they\u2019re frozen quickly after picking and processing, they\u2019re generally fairly sweet, without a ton of starch. I\u2019m happy to eat them pretty much any way they\u2019re cooked, or even not cooked at all. But when I tried cooking them long and slow, longer than I ever had before, I found something totally new. At first, early on in the cooking, the peas tasted good: clean and mildly sweet, with a snappy skin and a tender center. But as they kept cooking, the flavor went deeper, into a different dimension of sweetness, one that\u2019s lower, closer to the soil. The skin started to wrinkle, and the inside got creamy, and though there was nothing mushy about it, the whole thing sort of melted between my teeth. The key is to taste as you go, and to stop cooking at the perfect midpoint between crunch and mush. You\u2019re not trying to cook the crap out of them, but close. It doesn\u2019t take long \u2013 just 15 minutes or so \u2013 but it\u2019s a lot longer than most of us are accustomed to. Your hand will probably start itching to turn off the stove around the three-minute mark, but hold steady. Be strong. Be Italian, for approximately 15 minutes. You won\u2019t be sorry.<\/p>\n\nPeas and Prosciutto<\/h2>\n
Adapted from Italian Easy: Recipes from the London River Caf\u00e9<\/span><\/a>, by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers<\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n