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Peas with Corned Beef
(Piselli con la carne secca) Put on the fire a hash of corned beef, garlic, parsley and oil, season with a little salt and pepper and when the garlic is browned, put the peas in.
When they have absorbed the sauce, complete the cooking with broth or, failing that, with water. 110
A three-line Italian braise that assumes you know what it should look like. The essentials are a soffritto of chopped cured meat, garlic and parsley in oil, peas stirred in to take up that flavored fat, and just enough liquid to finish them.
- What "corned beef" means hereThe Italian is carne secca (Tuscan carnesecca), which denotes salt-cured pork belly — essentially pancetta — rather than the beef brisket an American reader pictures. Pancetta or prosciutto end, about 3-4 oz cut into small dice, is nearer the intent than canned corned beef; if you want beef, use bresaola or a firm salt beef, chopped fine.
- "A hash" is a knife instructionIt most likely renders battuto: meat, garlic and parsley chopped together finely on a board. Chop them as one mixture rather than adding them separately, and the fat renders around the aromatics instead of frying them dry.
- Do not let the garlic go past goldenThis is the hinge. Garlic in the battuto browns fast in hot oil and turns acrid, and the peas will carry that bitterness for the whole dish. Keep the pan at a medium heat and add the peas the moment the garlic takes color.
- Quantities, since none are givenReckon on about 3 tablespoons oil, 3-4 oz cured meat, two cloves garlic and a good handful of parsley to 2 lb peas in the pod, or roughly 1 lb shelled. That serves four as a side.
- Fresh, frozen or dried peasFresh spring peas need 8-12 minutes and very little liquid. Frozen peas need 5 minutes and almost none, since they release water as they thaw. Dried peas will not work in this method at all without long soaking and much more broth.
- "Absorbed the sauce"Stir the peas in the oil for a minute or two until they are glossy and coated, then begin adding broth a ladle at a time, keeping the level just below the peas. The finished dish should be moist and slightly saucy, not swimming.
- Salt lastThe cured meat and the broth both carry salt. Season lightly at the start as written, taste at the end, and adjust then.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was one of a wave of English-language Italian collections aimed at American households, and a number of its recipes correspond closely to those in Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, the 1891 book generally credited with codifying a national Italian cuisine for the domestic cook. The terseness here is Artusi's manner: a competent cook is assumed, and quantities are left to judgment. Piselli con la carne secca belongs to the large family of Italian pea dishes built on a cured-pork base, of which the Roman piselli al prosciutto is the best known. The translation of carne secca as "corned beef" is a period Americanism.