Creamed Peas -- Simple Garden Cooking at the Height of the Season

Mid-August. The garden is at the apex of its production. I am picking tomatoes, beans, corn, cucumbers, summer squash, basil, the early winter squash beginning to size, the second planting of carrots maturing, the kale just beginning to be ready. The kitchen counter is in a permanent state of being half-full of vegetables awaiting processing or distribution. I made a large pot of vegetable soup Wednesday using essentially the surplus from one day's harvest — corn, beans, summer squash, tomato, onion, garlic, broth, a handful of pasta — and the soup was excellent and used a substantial chunk of the day's overflow, which is the entire point of an August vegetable soup, the function being as much about garden management as about supper.

I made eight pints of pickled green beans Saturday — the dilly bean recipe Helen used, with garlic and dill seed and red pepper flakes and a vinegar brine, processed in the canner for ten minutes. The dilly beans are one of the small staples of the cold-weather pantry, eaten with sandwiches and on cheese boards through the winter, the bright green tang of them a reminder in February of the August row. The eight pints will go on the shelf in the cellar with the tomato sauce and the strawberry jam and the other put-by, the cellar in late August beginning to fill in the way the cellar of a New England farmhouse should fill, the slow accumulation of the season being one of the most ancient and most reliable pleasures of a country life.

Owen came over Saturday afternoon while I was in the garden and asked if he could help. I told him he could pick beans, which is the entry-level garden job and which I assigned him on the theory that a twelve-year-old can pick beans without doing damage and that the experience of standing in the bean row for an hour might be useful to him in a way that he would not be able to articulate at the moment but that might compound over the years. He picked beans for forty minutes. He asked questions about the tomatoes and the corn and the squash bugs (which he had spotted on the squash plants and asked me about, which I had not directed his attention to but which he had identified on his own, which I noted with some quiet satisfaction). He left at four with a small basket of beans for Patricia and a small bag of cucumbers for Ted and the slightly tired contentment of a child who has done some real work in a real garden and has been trusted to do it correctly.

The Friday vets coffee — Tom Albany has settled in completely now, has been bringing his own pastries for the last three weeks (his wife bakes, apparently, with serious skill), and the gathering has reorganized itself slightly to make room for him in the way that gatherings of older men reorganize themselves to incorporate new members, which is to say with very little visible effort but with a real shifting of the unspoken arrangements. Phil was pleased. Phil collects gathered men the way some people collect stamps. The gathering ran long this week — almost two hours, which is unusual — and we discussed the decline of the local hardware store (which is closing after fifty years), the prospect of the Hinesburg fall fair, and the relative merits of various brands of work boots, in which conversation I had nothing to contribute because I have worn the same brand of work boots since 1976.

The soup on Wednesday used up a good portion of the overflow, but the garden doesn’t slow down because you’ve made soup — by Saturday there was more to deal with, and it was Owen standing in the bean row that reminded me of the quiet virtue of the simplest preparations. Not every vegetable needs to become a project. Some of them just need butter, a little flour, some milk, and fifteen minutes on the stove. Creamed peas are what my mother made when the garden was running ahead of her, and they belong to the same tradition as the dilly beans and the soup — honest food, made quickly, from what the season put in front of you.

Creamed Peas

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 20 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 3 cups fresh shelled peas (or frozen, thawed)
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar (optional, to brighten fresh peas)
• 1 tablespoon fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped (optional)

Instructions

1. Cook the peas. Bring a medium saucepan of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the peas and cook until just tender, about 3 to 4 minutes for fresh or 2 minutes for thawed frozen. Drain and set aside.
2. Make the cream sauce. In the same saucepan over medium-low heat, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, for about 1 minute until the mixture is pale golden and smells faintly nutty.
3. Add the milk. Slowly pour in the milk and cream while whisking continuously, making sure no lumps form. Raise the heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently, until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 5 to 7 minutes.
4. Season. Stir in the salt, white pepper, and sugar if using. Taste and adjust seasoning.
5. Combine. Add the drained peas to the sauce and stir gently to coat. Cook over low heat for 1 to 2 minutes until the peas are heated through and fully incorporated into the sauce.
6. Serve. Transfer to a warm serving dish and scatter parsley over the top if desired. Serve immediately alongside roasted chicken, baked ham, or simply with good bread.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 185 | Protein: 7g | Fat: 10g | Carbs: 18g | Fiber: 4g | Sodium: 320mg