Scallops and Pea Shoots

Thursday 14 June
We first read about pea shoots, AKA snow pea leaves (豆苗 dòu miáo according to Wikipedia, and not to be confused with pea sprouts, which look like green bean-sprouts), in a Times Magazine cooking article back in 1980 - in the desert of the Molly O'Neill years. It prompted a flurry of fury, letters from all over the country saying thanks a lot for telling us how to cook something only available in New York's Chinatown.
About a week later, on a New York visit, we went out to dinner with Steve (Language Hat), a well-known chowhound, and the special (not on the menu) was . . . snow pea leaves. Wonderful, tender, fresh.
Not so long after that, on a summer stroll in Toronto's Chinatown, on the street was a guy selling . . . could it be? "Snow pea leaves?" we asked, having never seen them in their natural state. "Soapy lees," he agreed. We bought a pound, smuggled them over the Canadian border, and stir-fried them with garlic and broth, trying, in want of a recipe, to duplicate what we had had in the restaurant. Pretty close and pretty tasty.
It's only been twenty-odd years since then, and Jungle Jim's here in Cincinnati now has snow pea leaves (or as more people seem to call them, pea shoots) in season, as well as bluefish. We got a pound, and decided to use them as a bed for some nice dry scallops. It has been a while since we had had them (Jungle Jim's being the only local source), and I'm afraid my right hand has lost it cunning. I went looking for a couple of recipes for pea shoots, found this one, and it was . . . not a disaster exactly, just way too vinegary for such delicately-flavored greens, not to mention clashing with the scallops. Further, I should have trimmed them much further back (too much tough stem) and chopped them into shorter lengths. The scallops at least were exactly au point, but we basically had to lift them out of the resulting sauce and eat the shee poots by themselves. Still, live and learn. So here's a nicer way to cook pea shoots.
P.S. I also made some pickles and though we've only had them for lunch, they looked so pretty in the sunlight that I had to include them here.