For a couple of weeks now I've been wondering when fresh peas and broad beans were going to start making an appearance in the markets. Today, for the first time, I espied them, in a very sheeshy greengrocer's in Belsize Park. (Footnote: does anybody actually know how to spell 'sheeshy'? 'chichi'???) I decided to combine them with purple sprouting broccoli and fresh mint to make something resembling the vegetable stew in Jamie's Italy (the original recipe involves artichokes, fresh peas, broad beans, spinach, leeks, chicken stock and prosciutto).
I thought it was going to be lovely, but it didn't quite work out as planned. The chicken stock turned out on defrosting to be a fully fledged chunky soup that I'd made a couple of months ago and forgotten about - what with cannellini beans, onions and carrots in there already, it slightly swamped the delicate fresh green vegetables. And it's difficult to stew green vegetables without overcooking them. I didn't have any prosciutto so I put in a few anchovies along with the frying onions to give it a bit of base-note savour. This was a good idea. But for some reason the end result gave me a stomach ache as I was eating it. My stomach still feels a bit like a tightly clamped fist. Perhaps I'll enjoy it more tomorrow - there's enough to feed an army, at any rate.
