Here is the odd thing -- our first piece of advice within this edition of What’s Fresh is to buy frozen – they have come a long way. While fresh shelling peas are in the market right now, they can be a very dicey proposition. The moment peas come off the vine, their tender sweetness begins to convert to starch with alarming rapidity. Peas from far away (California for instance) are clearly most affected by this change, but recently sampling at the Union Square Greenmarket reveals that it is darn tough to find a sweet pea. One farmer we have mentioned before – Rick Bishop from Mountain Berry Sweet Farm – bucked the trend and had couple of fresh and sweet tasting pea varieties. Both his English Peas and his Petits Pois were great raw and would be fantastic cooked in any manner.
Some great ways to eat peas – fresh during the high season and all year long from frozen – are listed below. For frozen peas we have come to really love the Whole Foods product, which is a baby pea, reasonably priced and of fantastic quality.
