A miraculous thing happened to me in a restaurant about a month ago.
I had an inspiring dish.
Here it is.
It’s a snap pea salad with crispy quinoa.
Don’t judge it by the picture (I took it with my phone in a dark restaurant).
Here is my version of it that I’ll show you how to make today.
I love it when I eat something in a restaurant and feel like I need to go home and make it
immediately.
When I started eating out and cooking over 20 years ago, this would happen all the time.
But as you eat out more and more, this kind of inspiration happens less and less often.
And then Covid hit and almost destroyed the restaurant industry, so it’s been a very
long time since I ate something in a restaurant that I absolutely had to make at home.
In case you live in Boston or plan to visit Boston, you probably want to know the name
of the restaurant.
Ther restaurant is called Sarma.
It’s southeastern Mediterranean small plates.
Basically it’s farm to table American cooking with the flavors from Turkey, Armenia, Lebanon
and other countries in that region.
Their menu is organized by the main ingredient (like veggies, fish, meat, grains, etc).
My favorite dishes are always from their veggie section.
If you want the best vegetarian tasting menu in Boston, just go to Sarma and order every
single dish from the Veggie section.
It might be the best meal in Boston right now.
Ok, so let’s make this salad.
For the dressing, we’ll need 1/2 cup of pistachios, 1/2 cup of flavorless oil (like
canola), zest of 1 lemon.
3 Tbsp lemon juice (which is about 1 good sized lemon).
Here they are -- my zest and juice.
And 1 tsp of Dijon mustard.
This is not baking, so all the measurements are flexible.
Dump it all into a blender or pureeing machine of your choice, add a generous pinch of salt,
and run it until completely smooth.
If you find that your mixture is too thick or you don’t have enough of it for your
blender to work well, just add a splash of water or yogurt.
I had to add 2 Tablespoons of water to help my blender out.
In the end you should have a perfectly smooth mixture.
I’ve always struggled getting thick mixtures out of my vitamix, until one of my students
told me about this spatula that can get under the blades.
It’s not particularly quick, but does let me get every last bit out.
Taste your dressing and correct it for salt.
Sugar snap peas are a gamble.
Cooking them requires no skill, it’s all about the quality of the peas.
Sometimes they are sweet and crunchy and sometimes they are fibrous and stringy and there is
nothing you can do about it.
The store where I get them sells them already snapped.
This end is perfectly soft and doesn’t require trimming.
But if the stick is still attached, cut it off.
Snap the pod in half and taste.
If it feels fibrous, you might want to pull out the side strings.
Mine today are not stringy at all, which is wonderful.
Bring a large pot of water to almost a boil.
Salt it generously and wait for it to get all the way to a boil.
Fill a large bowl with ice-water.
Dump the peas into the boiling water.
Cover and cook for 1 minute.
Fish one out, plunge into ice water for 2 seconds and eat it.
It should still be very crunchy, but not grassy.
Immediately scoop out all the peas with a spider spoon into cold water.
You want to move very quickly here and get the whole tasting and removing of the peas
done in under 30 seconds to prevent overcooking.
Let the peas cool for 5 minutes, then drain them and dry with paper towels.
Blanched peas can be made ahead and stored in the fridge.
If you want, save a few pods for garnish and cut them lengthwise.
Cut the rest of the peas into bite size pieces.
It’s a little prettier if you do this at an angle.
But they’ll taste good no matter which way you cut them.
Slice some radishes on a mandoline.
I know I am not setting a good example here, but you should use a cut resistant glove.
Mandolines are dangerous.
And even with the glove don’t go all the way.
I like to chop my radishes into julienne, but you don’t have to.
I happen to have some kumquats on hand, and I thought they’ll add nice sunny burts of
acidity, but that’s completely optional.
You’ll run into some seeds in the center of each kumquat and I prefer to remove them.
If you’ve never worked with kumquats before, they are very sour little oranges with a very
sweet and tender skin.
Slice some scallions any way you want.
I am going diagonally because I need a pretty picture.
And we are ready to put it all together.
Add the dressing to the peas and mix well.
The total amount of dressing I made will be enough for a couple of pounds of peas, so
I am not using it all.
You can always taste and add more, but you can’t take it out.
Taste and adjust for salt.
Toss the radishes with a little salt.
Arrange your peas on a plate.
Top with radishes, kumquats, pretty peas, and if you happen to have some from my last
video, some crispy quinoa.
Let’s add the scallions, a little drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of maldon sea
salt, or your favorite finishing salt.
I know that color is something we process visually, but this salad tastes colorful.
It tastes like spring.
So vivid and energetic.
It’s the most fun I’ve had with vegetables in a while.
By the way, I have learned something very interesting about pistachios after recording
this video.
Although my dressing was very tasty, the pistachio flavor was mild.
I was hoping for more.
When I tasted my pistachios straight, they weren’t very pistachioey.
So I searched on seriouseats to see what brand of pistachios Stella Parks recommends and
guess what I learned.
The dark purple skin on pistachios can interfere with their flavor and if you want the pistachio
flavor to shine, you need to blanch your nuts and peel each one.
Live and learn!
I’ll have to give that a shot next time.
Here are more very detailed culinary tutorials for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.