It’s July. The garden is bathing in a deep, midsummer light. The hens are dustbathing, honeybees are feeding on the wildflowers, and the peas are ripening in their pods. Tonight, its risotto- a pan of silky smooth rice, peas and flakes of pecorino. Sometimes, life is good.
The peas were planted indoors in March, and as the near-constant rain lashed down, the peas sprung up with a promise of summer and sweetness. A month or so on, they were dotted around the garden- in the borders, in tubs and anywhere-there-was-a-space. They grew up hawthorn, apple twigs and garden canes. The shoots and the snow-white flowers are as perfect as crunching into the first ripe pod of peas.
Eight weeks on from planting those first peas in kitchen roll inners and a few inches of damp compost, the plants are a mass of emerald leaf, curling tendril and fattening pods.
Tonight, they have been picked and stirred into a pan of risotto.
Yes- you do have to stand for twenty minutes, stirring, ladling, stirring, but it’s a calming, soothing experience. Fry an onion and garlic until tender, pour in the rice (100g per person), stir, and then add a a ladleful of hot stock, stirring all the time. Once each ladleful of stock has been absorbed, the next is poured in and twenty minutes later, you have a pan of fragrant, silky rice.
Use whatever you have to hand or is in season. I team up a vegetable with a herb and a cheese- tomatoes, basil, oregano and mozzarella, butternut squash, rosemary and parmesan, peas, mint and pecorino.
This risotto was finished with a few generous handlefuls of peas, butter, finely sliced mint and pecorino, and the plates with a few curls of the rich, grainy cheese. Dinner was served, and the auburn sun sank below the skyline as we ate and drank.
It’s only breakfast time but you’ve made me hungry. Using your own peas must make all the difference to the experience as well as the taste.
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