Eat your peas!

The season for foraged foods has come to an end just as the first fresh produce is stretching out in backyard gardens. It’s the peas that come first, tender little shoots that peek out from clover-like leaves and cling with skinny tendrils to any kind of stick or frame you stick in the dirt beside them. I’d never grown peas before, but this year Chris Janelli of Salisbury dropped off an envelope full of seeds from his own garden, along with a note that said, “Peas in the ground now! NOW!” This was a couple weeks ago. I followed his extremely subtle instructions and have been rewarded with a couple dozen totally cute little plants that are throwing off tender little pods.Peas are really healthy for your garden, and a great first plant. They enrich your soil and put in a lot of nitrogen, which is a kind of natural fertilizer. My arugula will be super happy when it takes the place of those peas in a few weeks.Baby green peas are also good for your body, which I guess makes sense. I continue to be surprised by this, but they have loads of omega-6 fatty acids. How can this be when they seem so fat-free? Well, that’s nature for you, always full of surprises.Peas are also full of fiber (not as much of a surprise) and they’re low in unhealthy fats. There are studies being done now that show that even a cup of peas a day can provide superhero-strong levels of something called coumestrol, which is believed to help fight off stomach cancer.The other greens that are shooting up with mad vigor in people’s gardens now are mint (I have a bunch of this) and garlic (which I continually fail to grow — advice from garlic growers is welcome). All the other gardeners I know are happily pulling up little scallion-shaped bulbs at the base of slender, tender garlic greens. They don’t differentiate into tiny cloves until later in the summer. And they haven’t developed their garlicky bite yet; one website described young garlic as peppy, not pungent. Garlic is famously healthy and helps fight everything from cancer to heart disease to infections. It helps keep bugs such as ticks off your body. There are also studies being done now that suggest garlic can help keep your body from developing too many fat cells. Apparently, there is a school of thought that obesity is a form of chronic inflammation. Garlic helps fight the specific types of inflammation that cause your weight to balloon. Maybe.One thing that does seem to be clear is that garlic’s health benefits increase if you let your chopped cloves sit for a little while before you eat them. Cooking lowers the cancer-fighting properties of your garlic, as does the addition of acids such as lemon juice.This Italian-inspired summer salad tastes best if you let it sit in garlicky splendor for a half hour or so before you serve it. If you want to protect the health benefits of the garlic, add the lemon juice and vinegar only about 10 minutes before serving. This also seems to help keep the bread intact.Insalata povera (Poor salad)Serves four as a side dish3 cups stale, very dense bread; 1 stalk and bulb of young garlic, chopped (or one large garlic clove, minced); four stalks of fresh mint, chopped (get rid of the stems first); 1/2 cup julienned fresh, crunchy little green peas, in their pods; 1/4 cup celery, chopped fine; if any of your other herbs are looking at you invitingly from the garden beds, bring them in too, but don’t let them overwhelm your salad; 1/2 cup good olive oil; a couple squeezes of fresh lemon juice; 1 tablespoon of a nice mellow vinegar; coarse salt (this salad really absorbs the salt, don’t be shy); fresh pepper to tasteSo, no kidding, the bread for this salad really needs to be super dense or you’ll end up with glop. I also roasted my dense, stale bread for 10 minutes in a 350 oven, to give it even more backbone; the unintended consequence was that I got nice toasty bread edges, which upgraded the flavor of this salad, IMHO.*Soak your stale, dense bread in warm water for about five minutes or less, until it softens. Squeeze out the excess water. Break it up into big pieces and then toss it in a big bowl with the other ingredients (except the acids, if you want to protect the nutrients in your garlic). Taste. Adjust the seasonings. Then leave it alone for a half hour or so; add the lemon juice and vinegar about 10 minutes before you serve.* IMHO is the text message abbreviation for In My Honest Opinion.