DEBORAH CROMBIE: Our town's Saturday farmer's market is in full swing and absolutely packed with people from the time it opens until it closes at noon. If you want the best stuff, however, you need to go early. Peaches, strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries are in, as well as the first melons. It's still too early for field tomatoes, but making up for that lack is the first sighting of fresh black-eyed peas, lady cream peas, purple hulls, and pintos.
For years I've cooked all of the peas as long as they're in season, especially the delicate lady creams, but I hadn't had as much experience with pintos until recently. Surprisingly, it's really hard to find any recipe instructions online--if you type in a search for "how to cook fresh pintos" you invariably get back recipes for dried beans. This is a shame as the fresh beans are delicious. Look how pretty they are when they're raw, almost opalescent!
And cooking them is easy-peasy! Rinse, toss in stockpot, cover with an inch or so of water or stock, throw in some aromatics (I used sliced shallot, a couple of garlic cloves, fresh parsley, fresh thyme, some peppercorns, and a splash of white wine.)
Bring to a simmer, cook until tender and creamy, being sure to add liquid if they start to dry out. Unlike the long cook time for dried beans, these should only take half an hour to forty-five minutes. Keep tasting! Then add salt. You can eat them just like this, or with rice, or jazz them up with more seasoning, use in salads, drain and mash for tacos, etc., etc.
Here, I had some for lunch with sliced avocado, lime, sea salt, cilantro, salsa verde, and a dollop of homemade kimchi.
Reds and readers, do you get fresh peas and beans in your markets? Or is this more of a southern thing? Although I have a vague and probably apocryphal memory of my mom and grandmother sitting on the patio and shelling fresh peas, I never see them in the shell in the markets here now.
