© 2024
Local NPR for the Cape, Coast & Islands 90.1 91.1 94.3
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
The Local Food Report
As we re-imagine our relationships to what we eat, Local Food Report creator Elspeth Hay takes us to the heart of the local food movement to talk with growers, harvesters, processors, cooks, policy makers and visionaries

The First Fresh Shelling Peas Come to Local Markets. Here's What to Do With Them.

Each spring at the Orleans Farmers Market, David Light has the season’s first fresh shelling peas.

“This variety is called Coral,” he said, pointing them out. “It’s from Fedco in Waterville, Maine, and it’s an heirloom. They’re the early pea, and they’re also very, very tasty. They have a wonderful flavor.”

As the Fedco seed catalog puts it: Coral peas make harvesting before July 4th a cinch, even in colder years.

“I always have my peas in the ground at the latest by April 15th,” Light said. “These were probably in around April 10th.”

And how about later peas? David Light has them in the ground coming along, as well. They should be ready in a couple of weeks. He’s growing a variety called Lincoln.

“The Lincoln pea is another heirloom also obtained from Fedco,” Light said. “It goes back to 1908. It was named the year before the Lincoln penny came into existence. It’s a real heirloom.”

The word heirloom gets tossed around a lot these days. Depending on who you ask, it can mean a lot of things. But there are two things most people agree on: it’s a seed variety at least 50 years old, and it has to be open-pollinated. This means the plants swap pollen the old-fashioned way—through wind and insects—as opposed to in a lab, which is how hybrid seeds are made.

The Lincoln heirloom peas are an old English favorite first offered in America by J.M. Thorburn, an award-winning seed distributor, back in the early 1900s. It’s an incredibly sweet, highly-productive pea, good for freezing and prized for its ability to resist wilt—a common pea disease. Lincoln can also tolerate the summer heat, although as Light explained, that’s not its favorite thing. “They like cool, moist weather. So last year was a wonderful year for peas, even though it was cool. But the peas were later, much later.”

Most years, Light said, the Lincolns and the Corals will be gone by early July.

“Peas have a very, very short time,” he went on. “It’s about three weeks­—so this is week one. We’ll have peas for about two more weeks. That will be it for the entire year. You can grow peas in the fall, I’ve been told. But I don’t. I’ve tried it, but I don’t think it works well.”

With that in mind, I bought a pound of peas and asked Light what he likes to do with them, cooking wise. He said when they’re this fresh, simple is best. “We generally just cook up a mess of peas,” he said. “We put them in a little tiny bit of water with a tight lid. We bring it to a boil and we cook it for one minute. By the way, lots of butter—butter salt and pepper. And then we eat them.”

I ate my peas at home with fettuccine, asparagus, wilted butter lettuce, and bacon.

Here’s that recipe.

And here are some other great spring pea recipes:

Peas and prosciutto.

Spring pea crostini.

Crushed peas with smoky sesame dressing.

An avid locavore, Elspeth lives in Wellfleet and writes a blog about food. Elspeth is constantly exploring the Cape, Islands, and South Coast and all our farmer's markets to find out what's good, what's growing and what to do with it. Her Local Food Report airs Thursdays at 8:30 on Morning Edition and 5:45pm on All Things Considered, as well as Saturday mornings at 9:30.