BRATTLEBORO — Spring. Does it even now seem so far behind us?
For me, in this month when summer officially appears, I am simply happy it is no longer snowing. We had a lovely and early spring this year, one filled with such temperatures that in March I was able to plant spinach, enjoyed but now long gone, and two varieties of peas, which I picked for our dinner just days ago.
Strawberries are lush and sweet but very early this year; they may soon disappear even before I have the chance to make jam. I planted radishes not that long ago, and already I have been able to pull them from the earth, grimy and red and peppery.
I wipe the dirt off as best I can and eat them standing in the garden surrounded by the songs of birds in the trees and the glow of sun on the hill. What could be better?
Spring epitomizes beginnings. The voluptuous lushness of summer with its overblown ripeness is yet to come, and we are in the middle of a kind of bursting promise that is indescribably satisfying - full of radishes, peas, and strawberries.
From a perch inside the house I survey the progress of my modest rows of vegetables and decide what to pick for dinner. Out on the deck, I change my slippers for my garden mucks, then go down the stairs, open the little gate that keeps my cats out of the kale, and pick some peas.
Peas are actually fruit; in pea pods, those seeds are what we eat. It is quite a job to sit and shell a pound or two of peas, but I find if I adopt the Buddhist “love the moment” and sit on the deck with a glass of wine, the exercise is surprisingly easy.
Radishes I pull from the earth, usually too early, impatient for them to develop into fat round globes. I do not grow strawberries. I buy them already picked from our local organic farm stand.
These three form an early and very tasty triumvirate that in the first sweaty days of summer provides a lovely menu.
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Radishes are very quick to germinate and thus give almost instant gratification for those in need of their spicy quality, caused by the same enzymes that are found in mustard and wasabi. The radish is also a relative of the turnip and can be cooked as such.
Roasted or sautéed, radishes make a wonderful vegetable side dish. But I think the best way to eat radishes is with a bit of butter and some sea salt. A terrific little crostini can be made with a slice of baguette smeared with butter, then salt, then thinly sliced radish. This is the way my late spring/early summer dinner begins.
One could make another crostini with a little bit of goat cheese and some fresh peas, with salt and pepper to go with the radishes. But I hold out for using the peas as a main course.
Peas are an ancient food with origins in Turkey somewhere around 4600 BCE. The two basic kinds of peas are pod peas and those known as mangetout (French for “eat all”), in which the entire pea -fruit and pod - is eaten.
Within these two types there are myriad variations. Thomas Jefferson, one of the United States' great agriculturalists, grew more than 30 cultivars of peas at Monticello, and there are more than 1,000 varieties grown worldwide.
This year I grew pod peas and a sugar snap variety of mangetout. The pod peas seem more prolific and more tasty, and these will be the basis of our main course.
Peas are very similar to corn in that, once picked, their sugar starts turning to starch almost immediately. This means that freshly picked peas are sweet and tender and great eaten raw but perhaps slightly improved with a brief bath in some gently heated butter.
Once off the vine for any length of time, even an hour, those sugars change and turn the pea into something else entirely. You can still make something wonderful from them, but you need to handle them in a different way.
Older peas need to be cooked long enough, even stewed, to turn those starches into something creamy and smooth. They will lose their bright green color, but they will be delicious nonetheless.
Unless you keep your peas longer than one day, the following method will produce an exquisite result that sings of the garden.
I must give full credit to Elizabeth David for the recipe. She wrote a wonderful series of cookbooks that brought classic French, Italian, and Mediterranean cooking to light for the first time in post–World War II England and then in America.
Julia Child's great work, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was published in 1963. Elizabeth David's books came out in the 1950s, and she is somewhat the black sheep compared to Child's very American and appealing charm.
David's melancholy, many lovers, and chain smoking contrast wonderfully with Child's long, happy marriage and jolly quirkiness. If you are not familiar with her books, I encourage you to find them.
She modernizes an old French method of cooking fresh peas with lettuce, tiny new onions, and butter. You melt a quarter pound of butter and stew the vegetables in it. Nothing could be simpler, and nothing could produce a more sublime result. You will need at least three pounds of peas for four people, but believe me, every spoonful is heaven.
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So, having started with the crunch of the radish and moved on to the creamy and delicate stew of pea and butter, we get to dessert: the strawberry.
The first fruit to mature in the spring, we celebrate its arrival in Vermont with dozens of festivals and pounds of strawberry shortcake. How many of us have stopped to buy a quart of berries and found the basket empty by the time we arrived home?
I like my strawberries simple. One of my earlier columns [The Commons, Oct. 2008] gave a recipe for making ricotta cheese. I repeat it here with a slight variation. That's about as complicated as this dessert gets.
That is what fresh food should be about: a simple taste standing alone, not a lot of involved sauces or condiments, just the ingredients cooked well and presented unadorned.
Here is my menu for a very early summer meal using ingredients that you perhaps have in your garden or that can easily be found in town. I think it provides a well deserved reward for having weathered that last snow storm in April.
Radish Crostini
Serves 4
8 slices baguette, lightly toasted
1 bunch fresh radishes – about 2 radishes per slice of baguette
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, slightly softened
sea salt to taste
maybe some chopped chives, parsley or basil for the non purist
Spread the butter evenly on the toast. Sprinkle with salt and herbs, if using. Slice the radishes as thinly as possible and arrange them in overlapping layers on top of the butter.
Green Peas Stewed in Butter
Serves 4
3 pounds of freshly picked, freshly shelled peas
1 small head of fresh Boston or butter lettuce, shredded
1 small bunch of tiny new onions, peeled – or a small bunch of scallions sliced thinly
¼ pound or more – to taste – of unsalted butter
1 teaspoon of sugar
salt and pepper to taste
Melt butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Add sugar and dissolve. Add peas, lettuce and onions and let them stew gently for maybe 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper.
Serve in small bowls with soup spoons and eat slowly.
Strawberries with Ricotta and Honey
Serves 4
Make the cow milk ricotta at least two hours before dinner. It is really easy to make.
1 quart of whole milk – local, raw, organic if you can find it
¼ teaspoon of salt
1½ tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice
You will need a large sieve lined with fine-mesh cheesecloth placed over a large bowl.
Bring the milk and salt slowly to a boil over moderate heat. Stir to prevent scorching. When the milk begins to boil, reduce the heat to low and add the lemon juice.
Stir constantly for about two minutes, until the mixture curdles. Remove from heat and gently ladle the mixture into the cheesecloth. Leave to drain for a least an hour.
Gather up the cheesecloth by the four corners so that the curds form a ball inside and twist the cloth above the ball to apply a little pressure, then gently unwrap the cloth and empty the ricotta onto a plate.
The ricotta can be refrigerated for a few hours, but I recommend eating it immediately.
For the strawberries:
1 pint of the best strawberries you can find, washed and air dried
peel of 1 organic orange
your favorite honey
Mix the orange peel with the ricotta and put it in a serving bowl. Put the strawberries in a serving bowl. Serve both with honey to be drizzled over the ricotta. One of the best desserts in the world.