early summer eats

As usual, the night's menu revolves around what is fresh in the garden. Lately there's a lot of peas: sweet peas and snap peas. The snap peas are tempting for a crunch right off the vine, but cooking them every so slightly really brings out the sweetness. I generally put just a little oil on the fry pan and get it good and hot; sauté the snap peas briefly, sometimes with minced garlic, and then toss on soy sauce. They're good in a salad, and of course in a stir-fry with other things over rice.

I remember clearly the first time I tasted fresh sweet peas out of the pod. I was in junior high and ironically my classmate from Manhattan shared some on our end-of-the-year school outing taking the boat around the island. I was skeptical at first as the cooked peas my mother served were only surpassed in vileness by the cooked spinach. But these were a totally different thing, and the beginning of an awakening to fresh vegetables.

The sweet peas go well into a spring tabouli. I don't even cook the little ones but mix them into the still-warm bulghur. The basic recipe I borrow from The New Moosewood Cookbook, but then I vary the vegetables.

1 cup bulghur
1 ½ cups boiling water
1 tsp salt
black pepper, to taste
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed

Add the boiling water to the bulghur and cover and let sit 30 minutes or more. Mix in the other ingredients above. Then the recipe says to refrigerate before adding the vegetables, but that might be a more essential step when tomatoes and cucumbers are to be added. This time of year, I don't necessarily refrigerate at this stage, but toss in the peas, and some parsley and maybe mint. Dill, why not? Whatever I got that seems suitable. A few chickpeas are nice. Green onions, yes!!

Tonight are a lot of collard greens. Torn from the stems and cut into ribbons; add them to the garlic sauté, and then liquid – this time broth from the hambone that had been secreted in the freezer for months. Some are added to tonight's black bean soup; and the rest saved for another day in the freezer.