July 21, 2020

New peas (fresh peas in cream sauce)

Most of the vegetable dishes in From the Hearth are kinda over-the-top. Cabbage stuffed with meat. Cucumbers stuffed with meat. Turnips finished in cream. This pea dish is no exception.

Ingredients

2 lbs fresh peas
2 tbsp butter
2 cups water
1 tsp salt
1 head lettuce, cut in quarters

Bouquet garni:
2 sprigs parsley
2 scallions

Sauce:
1 tsp sugar
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup whipping cream (double cream)

Instructions

Shell peas. Place in pot with water, salt, butter, lettuce, and bouquet garni. Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered until peas are almost tender (about 10 minutes). 

Remove the herbs and add sugar. 

In a separate bowl mix the egg yolk and cream, and gradually blend in 3 tbsp of the hot water from the pot. 

Add the yolk and cream mixture to the peas, stirring gently until the sauce thickens. Adjust salt. 

Serve immediately, or place over hot water on a double boiler.

A lack of ingredients never stops me – we didn’t have lettuce, but we had kale. (Actually, sometimes in this recipe book, lettuce means “greens” more generally. Yeah, I’m going with that.)

New peas, freshly shelled, are wonderful things.

I was pretty proud of my bouquet garni (tied together with green onion).

Now, the original text from Menon suggests that the water will be almost all gone after cooking the peas. This … was not true. I tried adding the above egg yolks and cream to the pot, and it was really, really thin sauce. So, I dumped that out and re-added new cream and yolks. Then I got the sauce I’d been looking for.