Green pea and pearl couscous traybake
Serves: 2 adults as a main dish, also great as a side
Takes: ~30 minutes cooking time, 10 minutes of simultaneous prep time
Ingredients
1 medium-sized leek
1 T olive oil
150 g pearl couscous
400 ml boiling water
1/2 t dried vegetable stock
2 dried chillies
1 t fennel seeds, ground in a mortar and pestle
300 g peas in a pod (around 120 g podded peas)
200 g broccolini shoots
75 g edamame beans
100 g fresh, soft goat’s cheese
handful fresh herbs, such as parsley, dill or mint
1/2 a preserved lemon, or juice and zest of 1 lemon
dried chili flakes (to top)
black pepper
Method
Pre-heat oven to 200°C (400°F). Slice leek and place in an oven tray with a generous swig of olive oil. Cook for 10 minutes or until silken, stirring occasionally.
While the leeks are cooking, roughly chop the broccolini, leaving a few of the smaller pieces whole. Finely chop the preserved lemon.
Boil water and add stock, ground fennel seeds and the two dried chillies. Stir well. Add to the leeks along with the pearl couscous, the broccolini and the preserved lemon. Return to the oven for 5 minutes.
Pod the peas and discard the pods.
Add the peas and the edamame beans to the tray (or add at the end if you prefer to eat them raw). Cook for a further 5-10 minutes until the couscous is cooked, adding additional water if necessary.
Remove tray from oven. Top with roughly chopped herbs, goat’s cheese, a few additional slices of preserved lemon, a good grind of black pepper, an additional swig of olive oil and some chili flakes. You could also add a squeeze of lemon juice for extra acidity. Remove the dried chillies before serving.
The story behind the recipe
Spring has an frantic energy about it. As I write this, my right index finger is throbbing from a rather silly burn. Not the first time, probably not the last. How did I manage to burn myself? I was rushing, stirring the tray of leeks, pushing it back into the oven and my finger brushed the tray, singeing white. I’ve caught myself rushing all week, madly vacuuming the entire house, putting away the things that lurk in corners, trying out a new lay-out for my office. Is Spring the cause?
The wood pigeons, Dutch kererus, seem to think so. One of the best features of our apartment is that it looks out onto a huge tree, which has grown steadily taller over the years until its tips reach higher than our four-floor apartment building. The leaves are only just unfurling into their bright green brilliance now. Every year, we’ve watched a pair of pigeons start to nest in that tree, only for the nest to be hidden by leaves when the time comes for them to lay. But this year, something is different. We have a small balcony that extends out from our kitchen not far from the tree. There is wooden shelf on it with a few pots that have over-wintered, regenerating thyme, dried up calendula, and on the middle shelf, a round plastic pot with a few sprigs of new mint.
A few weeks ago, the wood pigeons started taking turns sitting in the mint pot, cooing and calling to the other in the tree. Perhaps they liked the smell of the mint, we reasoned, perhaps they just wanted a sheltered place during the cold snap. They looked smug when it snowed, toasty dry with a shelf roof above them. It did not seem right to disturb them. We would stand on the other side of the kitchen door looking through the glass, less than a metre away, and they would turn their head to give us eerie stares out of one eye, before fluffing out their feathers, puffing their throats out and cooing again.
Then a few sticks started appearing in the pot, the mint trampled down. Now they are busy with nest-building. We have ceded the small balcony to them. Sometimes they sit in the nest together, one will even sit on the other’s head, or they nestle against each other. Today they flapped back and forth all day, arranging and rearranging the sticks into a perfect circle within the pot, taking the end of a stick in a beak and nodding their head rapidly back and forth in a quick vibration to slot it into just the right spot. The sticks are beautifully selected to be the same width, bringing a wild symmetry to our balcony. The pigeons barely pause when I watch them, awed by their industriousness, barely daring to hope that they will lay eggs, that we might finally see baby pigeons.
Watching the pigeons, I reflect on how I have felt myself rushing all week, rushing for no reason, writing myself impossible to-do lists that still sit half undone. For most of my life, keeping busy was how I kept the worries at bay. But the older I get, the more I realise how important it is sometimes to sit with things, to give them space. Spring energy can be harnessed to great effect, but sometimes we also need to pause.
Thich Nhat Hanh died in January this year, aged 95. One of his teachings that most resonates with me for its everyday practicality is on how to wash dishes, which I first came across in ‘The Miracle of Mindfulness’:
“There are two ways to wash dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.”
In the last few years of his life, my Grandfather eschewed his dishwasher altogether, choosing instead to stand at the kitchen sink, contemplating his garden, slowly washing his few dishes by hand. He lived alone and there were so few dishes it would have taken all week to fill the dishwasher. But he also enjoyed the simplicity of the task, chiding me gently as I automatically opened the dishwasher, a barely used mug in hand. Wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.
When I am in the kitchen, I often catch myself rushing. I might be trying to take photographs and write the recipe as I go, cooking against a stopwatch so that I can give a sense of how long it might take to cook and prepare. Perhaps it is already late, we are hungry. I began this newsletter because I loved how time stopped when I was in the kitchen, when I was cooking. That is how I aspire to always be in the kitchen, absorbed in the process, not focused on the outcome. Cook the meal in order to cook the meal.
I settle down to pod (or shell) the peas. Podding peas, in that narrow window of the year when fresh peas are at their peak, may even beat washing dishes. It is rhythmic, meditative, soothing in its repetition. The tender fragrance as the pods open to reveal pleasing rows of fat peas. Sometimes the tiniest pods have the fattest, juiciest peas. Podding peas is Spring’s reminder to pause.
This week’s recipe is a traybake (for a whole cookbook worth of veggie and vegan traybakes, check out The Green Roasting Tin.) I first tried making it in February, when I was playing with leeks. This version, with Spring vegetables that still have some bite, is far superior. I went hunting for asparagus, but in the end I used fresh peas, broccolini and frozen soya beans (edamame), because the only green asparagus I could find was imported from Peru. That said, asparagus would also work.
I love this recipe for its simplicity. It uses a classic flavour combination of peas and mint, but with the twist of the preserved lemon and the oomph of the leek. After eating, my mouth glowed gently with the chili. You’ll only use one board, one knife, one tray (and perhaps a pyrex jug for the stock) so it won’t take long to do the washing up. The oven does the work for you. This is a recipe for all of my wonderful readers with small children or crazy jobs who write to me that they wish they had the time to cook some of my recipes but they don’t. I hear you. I feel you. Give it a try. Use frozen peas if podding fresh ones feels impossible or if they’re out of season.
The dish would be great as a standalone dinner, perhaps with the addition of a poached egg or a handful of walnuts for extra protein; or serve it as a green, savoury component of an Easter brunch spread. Traybakes also work well with orzo, or other grains, like spelt or quinoa, but you’ll need to allow for a longer cooking time. For my taste, it doesn’t require any additional salt if you’re using preserved lemons as they’re already pretty salty.
Thanks for reading and Happy Easter for those who celebrate.
Amelia.
PS for some really wonderful urban pigeon shots, check out the Dutch photographer Jasper Doest’s winning entry in the 2021 World Press Photo.