Creamed Peas and New Potatoes

This is a traditional country dish, one we looked forward to when I was a child. Mother usually made it in early June, when my dad brought in the first peas from his garden at our nearby farm. Although the garden potatoes weren’t fully mature and ready for harvest, he always dug a couple of hills so we could have new potatoes with the peas.

New potatoes are qualitatively different from old potatoes. Their skins are tender and the flesh holds its shape when cooked, and peas are never tastier than when they are fresh from the garden.

This is a dish that is extremely flexible with respect to amounts of ingredients. This evening I made it using these proportions for Dennis and me:

¾ pound small new red potatoes

1½ cups freshly shelled peas

Scrub the potatoes and cut them in half. Put the potatoes in a saucepan and barely cover them with water. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer until the potatoes are fork tender, about 15 minutes. Add the peas and more water, enough to barely cover the peas. Replace the cover and let the vegetables simmer while you make the sauce.

The sauce is what my mother called “white sauce” and the French and more pretentious cooks call béchamel.

3 tablespoons of butter

3 tablespoons of flour

1 ½ cups whole milk

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

Melt the butter in a one-quart saucepan over low heat. Stir in the flour. When the flour and butter are bubbling, set a timer for one minute. One minute is all it takes to “marry” the butter and flour, which prevents the sauce from being lumpy.

Stir in the milk and increase the heat to medium. Add the salt and pepper. Continually stir the sauce until it comes to a boil and is thickened. This takes about five minutes.

Drain the vegetable and put them in a bowl. Pour the white sauce over them, and serve.

All of these proportions are variable. If you’re making it for four, double the recipe. If you like potatoes better than peas, use fewer peas. If you like less sauce, that, too, is adjustable, using the formula one tablespoon butter and one tablespoon flour to  one-half cup of milk.

It isn’t even necessary to use fresh garden peas. Frozen peas are an acceptable substitute, but the potatoes must be new red potatoes. I think they are available in early summer in supermarket produce departments.

Mother usually served this dish with pan-fried pork chops, but tonight we ate it with cold salmon. Heavenly!

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer