Pea

A quick little stir-fry, great for a weekday dinner, and especially good if you can get a chunk of country ham, like prosciutto, Serrano, or Smithfield. Great, too, with sautéed Chinese sausages (sold at every Chinese supermarket) in place of ham. With white rice, this makes a nice little meal.

A pasta dish kids love and one that became traditional with mine whenever we left them with a sitter for the evening. It’s best if the ham is prosciutto, the cream thick and fresh, and the peas just shelled, but it’s pretty good with supermarket ham and cream and frozen peas, and I’ve made it that way plenty of times. For variety, add about a cup of sliced button mushrooms to the ham mixture.

Too few soups are both hearty and quick to make, but West Lake soups—named after their area of origin (West Lake is in the northern Chinese city of Hangzhou)—are stunning exceptions. I’ve eaten West Lake soup only in restaurants and homes in this country, but the preparations have always offered wonderfully clear and intense flavors and a marked richness. This comes not only from dropped egg whites but from loads of meat or fish, cilantro, peas, and, as I found out in the cooking, a bit of cornstarch, which is not altogether necessary but is harmless enough. If you’re interested in West Lake Fish Soup, which uses a slightly different procedure, see page 134. See page 274 for more on Shaoxing wine.

One of the world’s great dumplings, the samosa has migrated to Southeast Asia and elsewhere. As with most dumplings, the filling is easily varied. And, as with most dumplings, you can use store-bought dumpling wrappers or the simple homemade ones on page 62. But the super rich wrappers here are really the best. Traditionally, you would deep-fry samosas, but more and more often they are baked. They’re terrific either way.

I found versions of this dish on menus across America, Italian and non-Italian. I guess everybody loves its appealing flavors. It is delicious made with frozen peas, but when I was a child, my grandma made it only with the sweetest first pods of peas. I also remember that it was my job to shell them, and I ate quite a few of those raw peas. Pancetta is pork belly cured with salt, pepper, and other seasonings, then made into a roll, but not smoked like bacon. You can substitute bacon or Canadian bacon for the pancetta, and substitute fresh peas for frozen.

At our home, when we were newly arrived immigrants, for Sunday dinner it was either gnocchi or garganelli with sugo. The sugo, a rich sauce, was made of either chicken or cubed veal or pork—all second cuts of meat—which created a first-class sauce. The sugo does take two to three hours to make, so, if you have no time for the sugo and have a good piece of Gorgonzola, try this sauce. It will take no more than ten minutes once you have the gnocchi done.

“Straw and hay,” as the name of this pasta recipe translates, is a common dish in Italy, especially in northern Italy, Emilia-Romagna, the heart of fresh pasta making. It always includes a little prosciutto, the sauce is cream-based, and it needs lots of grated cheese. Here I added some chopped scallions for freshness, although the dish always has peas. It is best if made with fresh pasta, but dry fettuccine will still yield a perfectly delicious dish.

With its developed flavor and moist, saucy consistency, risotto is still special the day after—it’s not just cold rice. Riso Sartù is a dish I always enjoy when visiting my cousin Clara Pacelli in Naples. It is one of the most wonderful ways I know to transform cooked risotto into something new. The risotto is blended with meat sauce, green peas, and lots of grated cheese and packed into small molds with morsels of egg, prosciutto, and mozzarella hidden inside. Baked and then unmolded, the cakes are crisp and crunchy outside—as you can see in the photo below—and creamy and chock-full of treats inside. This recipe makes six cakes with 2 1/2 cups of risotto and a cup of Ragù alla Bolognese (page 143) as the meat sauce. It is easy to multiply the formula if you have more risotto and sauce, and ovenproof cups to serve as molds. This dish might be made today with leftovers, but traditionally it was the specialty of the Neapolitan aristocracy, and risotto was made expressly for it.

Here’s a fitting sauce for springtime, full of seasonal treasures: asparagus, sweet peas, scallions, leeks, and fresh mint. And the color? Springtime green! Of course, since all of the ingredients are available year round, you can enjoy this anytime. But it is truly splendid when made with produce in season. Fresh asparagus-locally grown if you can get it-is the foundation of this sauce, both its sweet flavor and the pleasing texture of the finely sliced vegetable. Use skinny asparagus spears for uniform appearance and easy slicing (and don’t throw away the stubs; see recipe that follows). If available, fresh sweet peas are wonderful in the sauce. If not, frozen peas are always acceptable.

Everyone makes this classic soup a little differently, according to preference. I like my risi e bisi rather brothy, but others make theirs quite dense. This is controlled by the intensity of the boil, whether the pot is kept open or covered, and cooking time, all of which determine the rate of evaporation. (I cook my soup covered, at a slow boil.) Either long-or short-grain rice can be used here. Traditionally, the soup was made with short-grain Carnaroli or Arborio rice, and I still think this gives the most authentic flavor and texture. It cooks faster too, but if you need to cook the soup longer or reheat it, the rice tends to dissolve. Long-grain rice, on the other hand, stays more intact in a long-cooking or reheated soup. But as it does not release starch like short-grain rices, the soup will be thinner.

We like to refer to this dish as our sophisticated chicken potpie. Lord knows we love chicken, and when you add the sweetness of Vidalia onion, carrots, and celery, you are on your way to some classic Southern comfort food. And we all need a little bit of that sometimes, don’t we?

It’s springtime, y’all! So—sauté these peas in butter with onions, and a hit of red-pepper flakes, and your kitchen will fill with the smells of this wonderful season. It’ll put you and your guests in a happy mood and put a spring in everybody’s step.

It’s spring in Seattle—that means fresh, tender peas, the first succulent morels, and firm, snowy halibut begging to swim around in a bowl with all that other goodness. For a little bite, I add some shaved Cincinnati radish—a long, mild radish that looks like a baby carrot. This is a lovely dish that puts me in mind of longer, warmer days.

There are as many springtime things in this salad as possible. In Seattle, we have so much rain that when spring comes, it comes HARD—favas, nettles, peas, spring garlic, and a host of wild little greens that go perfectly together. Regular balsamic vinegar is too heavy; white balsamic still has the sweetness, but it’s lighter and allows the flavors of the vegetables to really shine through. This recipe makes more vinaigrette than you’ll need for the salad. Use the remaining dressing on other combinations of delicate spring vegetables and greens.

Farrotto is a risotto-style dish made with farro instead of rice, but the similarity stops there. Farrotto has a greater depth and nuttiness than regular risotto—not better or worse, just different. It also produces a more textured final dish. It’s out of this world paired with spring’s first earthy morels and peas, which add sweetness and dots of color. For tips on cleaning morels, see page 34. Farro is emmer wheat, often erroneously called “spelt” in English; you can find true farro in fancy grocery stores or specialty Italian markets.

The success of this deceptively simple soup depends on the use of perfectly fresh English peas and careful, brief cooking to preserve their delicate flavor. The unctuous duck egg gilds the lily, highlighting the vibrant sweetness and color of the peas. If you wish to make the soup in advance of serving, chill it quickly in an ice bath after straining and blending in the cream. When ready to serve, reheat the soup while you poach the eggs.

I created this dish following a particularly inspirational visit to the farmers’ market, one of those visits where every vegetable looks like something holy and you want to take home every variety laid out in front of you. Think of this soup as more of a philosophy than a recipe. Use the very best, freshest, tiniest baby spring vegetables you can find, either following the guidelines here or substituting whatever looks best in the market, then accent their sweetness with just a hint of mint, lemon verbena, or cicely. If you do use favas in the recipe, be sure to follow the directions here for removing their skins; using the traditional blanching method will result in overcooked beans. The Cincinnati radish makes the soup a very pale, pretty pink that looks gorgeous served in shallow white bowls. Because this is such an easy soup to make, I also like to serve it in demitasse cups or small mugs as a walk-around first course for a relaxed spring get-together.