A love letter to frozen peas

Fish and chip tacos and a lemony, late-spring stew with orzo and artichokes

Make this while the British asparagus is still around, subbing in whatever delicate green veg you have in the fridge.

Frozen peas will always be there for you. When you get home from work and there’s nothing in the fridge. When you want your kid to eat something – anything – green. To bulk up pasta, fried rice or couscous, when you’re fresh out of ideas and fresh ingredients.

I recently had a week-long stay in hospital with my son. I won’t bore you with the details – the horror, the beeping, the endless, endless waiting, the ‘food’, the 24-7 bright lights, the anxiety, the ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ uttered over and over again to my 18 month-old, sorry for the endless injections, medicines and checks, so much so that he started to say ‘sorry’ back to us and my heart broke into a million pieces. If you want to read about what staying in hospital with a small child in 2024 is like, Laura Goodman’s recent – brilliant – newsletter sums it up better than I ever could.

No, I want to tell you about the frozen peas. The relief I felt, the night we got home, to be able to root around in the overcrowded freezer drawer and find that familiar-feeling bag. How after a week of eating takeaways, it was the sweetest sound, listening to an onion gently frying, the peas thwacking into the pan.

I want to tell you about the joy I felt, standing at the stove again after a week camped out next to my son’s bed, trying and failing to keep a toddler with a cannula in his foot sane. The elation of, after the many night-time visits from the well-intentioned but unfamiliar nurses, knowing that after I’d cooked this dinner, we’d be back to doing the usual tidy up, story, bath and bedtime routine away from the glare of hospital lights.

How, holding my boy close, I felt like the luckiest person in the world. How stupidly, giddily grateful I am that our stay in hospital was brief, that the NHS exists, that my son recovered well and that we were able to be discharged and come back home. Back to the bag of frozen peas, the smell of garlic gently frying in olive oil, the little person getting in the way at my feet, home to all the things I used to complain about and that I will try never to take for granted again.

Fish and chip tacos

Definitely not authentic, but this is a fun way to switch up the usual oven tea.

Serves 2

For the curried salt and vinegar potatoes

• 400g small new potatoes

• 2 tsp curry powder

• 1 tbsp white wine vinegar

For the pea and jalapeño salsa

• 200g frozen peas

• 4 spring onions, finely chopped

• Juice of 1 lime

• 2 tsp white wine vinegar

• 1 tsp sugar

• 1 tbsp jarred jalapeño, thinly sliced

• 300g frozen battered cod bites

• 8 small tacos

• Mayonnaise, lime wedges, hot sauce and lime-dressed gem lettuce, to serve

1. Preheat the oven to 180C fan. Quarter the potatoes into wedge shapes and arrange on a baking sheet with the curry powder. Season with salt and drizzle with oil. Bake for 15 minutes, remove from the oven and toss in the vinegar. Bake for a further 10 minutes.

2. Add the fish to a separate baking sheet while the potatoes are cooking and bake according to the pack instructions.

3. Meanwhile, pour boiling water over the peas and set aside. Combine the spring onions, lime juice, sugar and jalapenos in a bowl. Drain the peas and roughly mash with the spring onions using the back of a fork.

4. Heat the tacos over a medium-high heat for a few seconds on each side, keeping the rest warm in a tea towel as you go., Serve with mayo, lime wedges, salad and hot sauce.

The baby step
Keep some of the peas separate and serve as finger food with the potatoes, flaked fish and a taco.

Late-spring stew with lemon and artichokes

Leave out the crème fraîche and parmesan at the end to make this vegan.

• 1 white onion, diced

• 1 lemon

• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• 250g Jersey Royals or small new potatoes, halved  

• Around 400ml vegetable stock

• Small bunch spring greens, woody stalks removed, finely chopped

• 200g orzo, or other small pasta (or a mixture)

• 1 jar artichokes in olive oil

• 1 bunch asparagus, woody ends removed, chopped into 3cm pieces

• A big handful of frozen peas

• Parmesan and crème fraîche, to serve

1. Heat a splash of olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and zest of the lemon and fry for 5-10 minutes, until translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another couple of minutes until fragrant. Add the Jersey Royals and pour over enough stock to just cover, reserving the rest. Simmer for 5 minutes, until the potatoes are just tender.

2. Add the spring greens, pasta and remaining stock to cover. Stir in the artichokes. Simmer until the pasta is almost done, adding the asparagus, frozen peas and the juice of the lemon for the last 2-3 minutes.

3. Serve with a dollop of crème fraiche to stir through and a good grating of parmesan.

The baby step

Hold back on the salt for younger babies and fork-mash to the right consistency. My son hoovered this down, but that might have been because he’d been living on Weetabix for a week.

Other ways to use frozen peas

• Blitz with preserved lemon, soft herbs and a spoonful of ricotta then pile onto sourdough toast, keeping the texture fairly chunky. Top with a poached egg.

• Stir-fry a pre-cooked pack of rice with soy, sesame, ginger and garlic, adding frozen peas and beaten eggs towards the end of the cooking time.

• Blitz cooked broccoli and frozen peas while you simmer a garlic clove and the zest of a lemon. Combine and toss through cooked macaroni, adding chilli flakes if you like.

• Combine a handful of peas with grated halloumi or crumbled feta, a beaten egg, a spoonful of flour and a splash of milk, until you have a thick batter. Pan-fry until golden on each side and serve with a salad.

PS This week I’m loving…

The chocolate that got me through the 2am wake ups in hospital, this is creamy, dark, rich, chunky and seriously decadent.

You can get a bunch of peonies for a fiver in M&S at the moment – these are bringing me much joy.