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Peas with Onion Sauce
(Piselli alla francese) The following recipe is good for one of fresh peas. Take two young onions, cut them in half, put some stems of parsley in the middle and tie them. Then put them into the fire with a piece of butter and when they are browned, pour over a cup of soup stock. Make it boil and when the onions are softened rub them through a sieve together with the gravy that you will then put on the fire with the peas and two whole hearts of lettuce. Season with salt and pepper and let it simmer. When the peas are half cooked add another piece of butter dipped in a scant tablespoonful of flour and pour in some broth, if necessary. Before sending to the table put in two yolks of eggs dissolved in a little broth.
The following recipe is simpler than the preceding, but not so delicate. Cut an onion in very thin slices and put it on the fire in a saucepan with a little butter. When it is well browned add a pinch of flour, mix and then add according to the quantity, a cup or two of soup stock or water with bouillon cubes and allow the flour to cook. Put in the peas, season with salt and pepper and add, when they are half cooked, one or two whole hearts of lettuce. Let it simmer, seeing that the gravy is not too thick.
Before serving remove the lettuce. 108
Two versions of the same dish: an enriched one thickened with egg yolk, and a plain braise. Both are French petits pois in Italian dress, and both depend on peas that are actually young.
- The egg yolks must not boilSlaked with a little broth and stirred in off the heat, the yolks thicken the gravy to a light coating sauce. If the pan returns to a boil they curdle into threads and the sauce is finished. Take the pan off the flame, stir them in, and serve.
- "One of fresh peas" is ambiguousThe original omits the unit; a pound or a quart of peas in the pod is the likeliest reading, which shells out to roughly a cup of peas. Scale the cup of stock accordingly.
- Frozen peas change the timingFresh shelled young peas want 8-12 minutes of simmering; frozen peas are blanched already and need 3-4. With frozen peas, build and thicken the sauce first, then add them near the end, or the "half cooked" stage never arrives.
- Browned onionsRead this as a good golden colour in butter over moderate heat, not a hard scorch. In the first version the onions are sieved into the sauce, so any burnt edge carries straight through.
- Sieving, made easyRubbing the softened onion through a sieve with its gravy is the step that gives the first version its body. A stick blender or a food mill does the same work; discard the parsley stems and the string first.
- Butter dipped in flourThis is beurre manié — about a tablespoon of soft butter worked into a scant tablespoon of flour, dropped in in pieces and stirred until dissolved. Add it to liquid at a simmer, not a boil, and give it a couple of minutes to lose the raw flour taste.
- Hearts of lettuceUse the tight inner heart of a romaine or butterhead, halved and tied if it wants to fall apart. In the first version it stays in and is eaten; in the second the book has you pull it out, where it has served only to sweeten and moisten the peas.
- Bouillon cubesBouillon cubes can be markedly salty. Season at the end rather than the start, whichever liquid you use.
- YieldWith the unit for the peas missing, a side dish for two to four.
Piselli alla francese is the Italian rendering of petits pois à la française, the French treatment in which young peas are braised with butter and lettuce rather than boiled in water — the lettuce giving up moisture and a faint sweetness as it collapses. Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was compiled for American households and draws on the domestic Italian canon of the previous generation, in which Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina likewise carried French-titled dishes into Italian kitchens without apology — Artusi gives piselli alla francese in two methods. The two versions here, the delicate and the simpler, are a habit of that tradition: give the cook the good one and the quick one, and let the household budget decide. The egg-yolk liaison in the first belongs to an older school of sauce-making.