green peas and bacon

For this month's Missing Ingredient Challenge, the new foodiepages blog editor, Devon, asked me to come up with something using fresh green peas. Hmm...green peas. My total experience with green peas has generally been reserved for two options: tinned or frozen. But, since it's summertime, this is the best time of the year to experiment with fresh ingredients, so off I went in search of green peas.

The Missing Ingredient Challenge: green peas

Green peas are currently in season here in Ontario and we recently bought some “just picked” peas from a roadside farm stand (seriously, I actually had a lot of trouble trying to find fresh green peas at the grocery store!).

After trying to figure out how to best showcase these little green gems, I figured, simple is best. You can easily adjust the amount of ingredients in the following recipe depending on your preference. The amounts I have listed below were a nice balance between the two – you have the saltiness and flavour of the bacon, but the peas still managed to hold their own and you could really taste the freshness of the green peas.

green peas and bacon

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ingredients:

4 slices of bacon, cut into small ½ inch pieces
1/2 small onion, diced
1 1/2 cups of fresh green peas

directions:

1. In a skillet or frying pan on medium heat, fry the bacon and onion together until bacon is crisp and onion has softened and is translucent (there’s no need to add oil as the bacon will produce enough grease as it cooks). 
2. Add the peas, stir ingredients together and cover. 
3. Continue heating until peas are just softened (approximately 8-10 minutes). 
4. Remove from heat, toss again to ensure ingredients are well mixed. Serve warm. 

You can see some of the other recipes I've come up with for The Missing Ingredient series in foodiepages blog archives.