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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Pleasing peas

By Russ Parsons
Los Angeles Times

Poets and gardeners agree that no flavor better captures spring's sweet song than that of a perfect English pea. They might be right, but most of us are just going to have to take their word for it.

It's just too difficult to find fresh peas in most markets. But there is a better choice — and one that is amazingly plentiful at this time of year.

The sugar snap pea captures all of the English pea's charms, and adds a distinctive crunch as well. Best of all, it retains its sweetness and vitality long enough that you can actually get a chance to enjoy it.

The only problem is figuring out what to do with them. For years, I've found sugar snap peas singularly exasperating to cook with. The problem is they're so delicious raw — so bursting with that sweet green vitality — that it seemed like cooking could only diminish them.

And so I'd keep things very simple: blanch them briefly to brighten the color, then dress them lightly with a little butter and coarse salt. Or maybe I'd combine them with herb mayonnaise and quickly cooked shrimp for a spring salad. Or something like that.

There's certainly nothing wrong with either of these treatments, but earlier this month, I got the urge to do a little more. And it turns out the answer was right in front of my face: Sugar snaps have all the sweetness and verdant flavor of English peas, so why not adapt traditional pea recipes using them?

Pureed, the sugar snaps make a splendid stand-in for peas in a vividly green light soup.

Left whole and steamed briefly in lettuce leaves, their flavor picks up added notes of complexity. And cut into pieces and stirred into a prosciutto-based risotto, they add a surprising crunch to what is really a souped-up risi e bisi.

Sugar snap peas are a fairly recent hybrid that combines the best features of two other varieties — sugar peas (another name for snow peas) and snap peas (another name for the English pea).

They have the edible pod of the snow pea and the swollen seed, thick hull and surpassing sugar of the English pea. The biggest difference between the sugar snap and the traditional pea is that the former's succulent hull is remarkably high in sugar and low in fiber. Eat an English pea pod and you'll wind up with a mouth full of string. Eat a sugar snap pod and all you'll get is a smile.

Edible-pod peas have been around for ages — they are mentioned in 18th-century gardening texts. But they had fallen out of favor in this country by the start of the 20th century, only to be re-introduced in the 1970s — snow peas by 1,000 Chinese restaurants, and sugar snaps by the enthusiastic marketing of a plant breeder named Calvin Lamborn.

Lamborn was trying to improve an existing snow pea variety and had the bright idea to cross it with an English pea plant that had formed very hard, tightly sealed walls. His new plant, introduced in 1979, was immediately honored with a gold medal from the All-American Selection committee.

Lamborn's creation has become so successful that "sugar snap pea," which originally applied only to his specific variety, has become so widely used as to be almost generic. The sugar snap has become the Xerox of edible-pod peas.

Pea plants thrive in cool weather and are fast-growing. Like all legumes, they add nitrogen to the soil. So you sow your seeds in January, and by early March, you'll have sugar snaps by the ton. And then you can plant your summer crop on improved land. Choosing sugar snap peas at the farmers' market is almost foolproof; there are so many you can just wander from stand to stand tasting.

Some varieties of sugar snaps are stringless. I haven't noticed any difference in flavor between these and others.

If yours need stringing, it's easy to do: Bend back the stem end until it snaps, then gently pull away the string that runs the length of the pod like a zipper.

When cooking sugar snaps, concentrate on brevity. You'll want to preserve that lovely crispness, which fades after five or six minutes. Color is the other risk factor — sugar snap peas begin to turn from verdant green to olive drab if cooked more than seven or eight minutes.

Most of the time, you won't need to worry about this. In the risotto recipe that accompanies this story, for example, the snap peas are stirred in after the last addition of stock. They cook for only three or four minutes before you remove the pan from the heat and beat in the butter, chives and cheese. This way, you get the green color you'd get from English peas and a distinctive crunch as well.

Steaming snap peas in lettuce leaves is even simpler. All you're trying to do here is brighten the color, soften the minced shallots a little, and tenderize the pea pods just enough that they'll absorb some of the flavors.

They should be nearly raw, with that perfect crisp-moist texture you don't really get from anything else. Discard the lettuce leaves; they're just there to cushion the heat and provide a little of their green herbal flavor.

The only tricky bit of timing comes with the pureed soup, but the finished dish is so lovely and vividly flavored you won't mind. Boil the peas long enough that they are thoroughly softened, but not so long that the color fades. This should take no longer than six to eight minutes. First, cover the pot with a lid to quickly return the water to a boil, then keep a close eye on the peas: As soon as the first one starts to go drab, drain them and immediately plunge them into an ice water bath to stop the cooking.

Puree the peas — pods and all — in a blender, adding only enough stock to get things moving. If yours have strings, remove them before cooking, as they'll gum up the works. This first step will make a thick puree that can be used as a side dish. It will thin after the first straining but you'll still need to stir in some stock to get the right consistency.

Strain it a second time through a fine mesh and you'll have a soup of surpassing silkiness, a vivid emerald in color, with a sweet, clean, slightly herbal flavor. Pour it in a wide bowl and swirl in a splash of nutty, ivory-colored Parmesan cream for contrast.

And then call your favorite poet — or gardener — and tell them dinner's ready.