In Praise of Frozen Peas: Freezer-to-Table Recipes

In Praise of Frozen Peas: Freezer-to-Table Recipes

Yes, it’s possible: delicious green vegetables, even in the darkest depths of winter. Find the answer in the frozen food aisle—and in these recipes for pea-centric pasta, soup, crostini and a game-changing side dish

By Gail Monaghan in the Wall Street Journal

FRESH ISN’T ALWAYS better. Though excitement runs high each spring as a new crop of green peas hits farmers’ markets, the season is short—and often not so sweet. Yes, just-harvested peas are sublime, but also extraordinarily fragile; once they’re picked, their sugar content quickly converts to starch. Flash-freezing peas as close as possible to the moment when they’re plucked from the vine is the best way to preserve their flavor, and their nutrients, too.

Recipes

A dish with the unpromising name of mushy peas showed me the way. My epiphany occurred one winter in the 1990s at J. Sheekey, the wood-paneled, leather-banquetted seafood standby in London’s West End. Knowing that the mushy peas at British chip shops are typically made with the dried, starchy and, to my mind, bland variety called marrowfat peas, I never would have made the selection myself, but the side dish arrived unbidden. These mushy peas were made with the sweet variety, clearly, and laced with fresh mint. They had a concentrated sweetness and a vivid brightness that offset our fishy entrees perfectly. Far as we were from the pea season, I realized the kitchen at J. Sheekey must be using the frozen kind.

Back in New York, I started doing the same, and I found that the icy little gems cooked up beautifully, even delivering a satisfying degree of succulence and pop. Countless pea-centric side dishes, soups, salads, pastas, omelets and frittatas followed.

For instance, I’ve discovered that a creamy pea purée plus sauteed mushrooms and a dollop of ricotta makes a delicious crostini topper. Combine peas and two other often-underappreciated vegetables—lettuce and celery—with cream and stock, and you have a refreshing green soup for a winter day. A recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi ’s cookbook “Jerusalem” inspired the pasta shells and green peas with pine nuts, basil and Greek yogurt, which gets a subtle hint of heat from Aleppo pepper.

Frozen peas are inexpensive and available everywhere, all the time, so you can afford to experiment. Go ahead and play with different spices and aromatics; the versatile vegetable features in dishes from around the world. Indian mutter paneer—peas plus fried cheese, tomatoes, onions, curry and cumin, served over rice—is a long-standing favorite. And for brunch lately I’ve been serving a Portuguese pea-onion-tomato-garlic-chorizo stew with a baked egg nestled into each portion.

However you choose to use them, frozen peas provide a heartening shot of green on a winter table that is too often dominated by shades of beige. With spring’s fresh produce still a distant glimmer on the horizon, they’re a minor miracle.