Oh my, would you look at that?
I know salads aren’t the most exciting thing to post about, but I have to because I was driving back from the Takoma Park farmer’s market (I try to alternate between Dupont and Takoma, and I hope to add Penn Quarter into the rotation as well), where a young woman exclaimed over my insulated farmer’s market bag, and the vegetable stand on the corner of Jones Mill and East West Highway is back, and whatddaya know they have in-the-pod English peas.
I love peas, and always have, but after spending a semester in London I became a huge fan of mushy peas, the ubiquitous fish and chips side, which can only be properly made with english peas. That’s not how I used them last night, but I have enough leftover for tonight’s feast!
But I did have a delicious salad last night– a local, all pesticide free, almost all of it from the farmer’s market, except the bit that came from the garden I’ve been planting at a friend’s house! (I live in an apartment building — no land to garden on myself.) Delicious large and curly spinach leaves, some crispy and mild (and HUGE!) radishes, sliced thick, our home-grown cherry tomatoes, just slightly underripe as I like ‘em, quartered, coarse chopped roasted spring asparagus, and those english peas, shelled, boiled for about 4 minutes, cooled and tossed top. I dressed it with a lemon vinagrette: 1 part lemon juice, 1 part apple cider vinegar, 3 parts olive oil, salt and pepper.
It was like eating a sparkling plate of jewels, so crips and so clean and so acidic. Paired with the young spring chicken I bought from Smithfield’s Meats (again, farmer’s market and ALL pasture-raised and grassfed!) and roasted, it was just perfection.
Ahhh, summertime is here.
Up next: Strawberry Jam. Because I went strawberry picking and made it into jam.
1 Comment
June 11, 2009 at 8:03 am
I never did like peas..but after this post i made might just try it!