Friday July 18
Last Thursday, when I said we cooked the last sugar snap peas from the garden, I underestimated the staying power of those little vines. Though browning rapidly, they put forth new growth from their bases, and each evening walk in the garden (a.k.a. "mosquito's smorgasbord") produced several handfuls of both young stubby pods and bulging overgrown ones I had missed on a previous go-round. I saved them up in the crisper drawer, and at the end, I had about half a pound of edible pods and a quarter pound of peas out of the shell. So I decided to substitute them for snow peas in a simple Chinese dish of shrimp and peas.
Holt, chinese-sous-cheffing as usual, got the mise-en-place together, shelled a pound of shrimp (while I was shelling peas), and marinated it as above. Both the podded and unpodded peas needed longer cooking than slim snow peas, so after a quick wok-fry of the garlic (which I now do off-heat - it's safer), I gave the little pods five minutes' stir fry with some salt until they turned bright green, added the loose peas, melted about a quarter cup of frozen broth (duck this time) in the wok, covered, and simmered at low heat for another five minutes, until both pods and peas were tender. I removed them to a covered platter, and proceeded as usual with stir-frying the shrimp till opaque, adding the oyster sauce, and re-assembling the whole dish with a sprinkle of sesame oil.
Results were as tasty as they were picture-pretty, though picking up the loose peas calls for wicked chopstick skills. But we has - I mean have - them, and managed the dreaded mid-air chopsticks-to-chopsticks pea-pass without a single splat.
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