Monday, June 8, 2009

raising pea shoots


i bought some fresh peas from the korean grocery the other day, thinking i'd sprout them and have some pea sprouts to sprinkle on salad. plus i'm really enamored with growing vegetables in the house since i popped a couple mung bean sprouts in a pot on the kitchen window sill and was amazed to see them grow into real plants that even bore little bean pods.


when they started sprouting i realized i had confused pea sprouts with peanut sprouts (which are actually my favorite), and i wasn't really sure what to do with the pea sprouts. then i remembered how much i love pea shoots - they seem like such a gourmet delicacy on salads. so i punched holes in the bottom of an aluminum potluck pan (it already had a hole so i figured i wasn't ever going to make a casserole in it anyway), filled it with soil and sprinkled a couple handfulls of sprouting peas into it.
a few days later i came to terms with the fact that i really wasn't ever going to eat any of the sprouted peas, so i made two more planter trays with the remaining sprouts.


and they grow like crazy. they were tall enough to harvest in less than a week. here are some good instructions on when and how to harvest pea shoots. they say you can harvest every 3-4 weeks, but my peas are growing so fast i'm harvesting every few days. they are so responsive to light you can almost see them bend backwards when i spin them away from the window. they make me really happy.

in fact, if i were going to say something about them, it would be this:

um, sort of.


i was surprised (i dont' know why) by how much they really taste like peas. i've been clipping them and adding to somen salad - which, by the way, is the best potluck dish ever. people love it. hit me up for the recipe if you want it.

3 comments:

la_sale_bete said...

ooh, these look delicious and wonderful! we're going to have an indoor garden next year...perhaps pea shoots can be a part of the plan.

Rachel said...

wait, so now we have to request the recipe privately? what is the point of this blog anyway, hmmm?

kasha said...

here's the somen salad recipe, courtesy of my mom.

Somen Salad:

2 Tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted and ground*(sometimes I double the amount of sesame seeds)
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cooking oil
3 Tablespoons rice vinegar
2 Tablespoons shoyu (soy sauce)
Mix ingredients in a bottle and shake well before pouring.

*put the sesame seeds in a heavy, flat pan on low heat and keep them moving, try not to burn them although they're OK if some get a little burnt. Get the untoasted ones, if you can and toast them.
(I usually double the amount of sesame seeds and the whole recipe, because we usually run out of it first.)
Get a package of somen noodles and boil them according to the directions. I rinse them in cold water after they're cooked, because they tend to stick together. Also, be careful not to over cook them. I think they're in the water only about two minutes.
Then decorate the noodles with what you like to eat: veggies, tofu, etc. and enjoy!