Serious Eats: Recipes
Dinner Tonight: Peas with Mint
The recipe's title is being a tad modest. Sure, it is peas and mint. But that discounts the ingenious inclusion of Boston lettuce, which just compounds the green on green, with ... more green. You can use fresh peas, but frozen are acceptable, too—and it worked fine for us.
It was actually much better than fine. I served this up with a beautiful cornish hen, but all attention was focused toward the green. At the end of the meal, my fiancée and I were scraping the pan for any loose pea that hadn't made it to our plates. That doesn't happen too often. Tellingly, this great recipe came from Vegetable Love, by Barbara Kafka.
Peas with Mint
Ingredients
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup fresh or frozen peas
2 tablespoons chopped mint
1/4 head of boston lettuce sliced thinly
Pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon of sugar
Procedure
1. Melt the butter in a pan over high heat. Add the peas and cook for two minutes. Cover and drop the heat to medium. Cook for another 3 minutes or so.
2. Toss in the mint, recover, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the sliced boston lettuce, and cook until they wilt.
3. Turn off the heat, add the salt and sugar, and plate.