Pasta e Piselli: Shelling Peas with Nonna in Sicilian Spring

Peas, pasta and pantofole

You are six or seven years old. It is spring, which in southeastern Sicily means the air has turned soft and the kitchen smells different. Green and alive in a way it hasn't since the year before. Nonna is shuffling around the house in her pantofole (house slippers). You enter the kitchen and see a giant heap of pea pods. Some longer than your arms. “Vieni qua (come here).” she says. You have a job to do!

You sit down and start shelling. The pods snap open. The peas roll into the bowl. You eat a few raw ones because you can’t help it, and they are sweet in a way the cooked ones never quite are. Nonna pretends not to notice. You quietly shell as you listen to the adults gossip. A few peas turns into a large pile, soon to be made into a simple pasta e piselli.

Nobody calls this a memory while it's happening. It's just a random afternoon in the springtime. But ask any Sicilian who grew up with a nonna — in Siracusa, in Ragusa, anywhere in the southeast — and they will describe this exact scene without hesitation. The pile of pods. The bowl. The pods all over the table and floor. The pantofole shuffling around. The raw peas eaten on the sly. It is one of the most universal Sicilian childhoods there is. When we think of spring peas, we think of pasta and our nonna in her purply-pink pantofole.

Of course, the pantofole had more than one use. Any Sicilian child will tell you that nonna's slipper could fly across the room with alarming speed and accuracy. But in the kitchen, during pea season, there was a truce. You were useful! You were safe.

Why peas, and why now

Peas have been grown in Sicily since Roman times, and they arrive every spring with the kind of reliability that used to matter enormously (there was a time when what the land gave you in April was what you ate in April). They are one of the first things to come in after the long winter, sweet and tender and brief. The window is short, about March to June. Then another year of waiting.

In Italy, food is love, and in a Sicilian spring kitchen, love meant everyone crowding around the kitchen table and popping peas into a bowl.

Cucina povera at its finest

Once the peas were shelled, nonna made pasta e piselli. Pasta and peas: the quintessential cucina povera dish of the southern Italian spring. “Poor kitchen cooking”: not poor in spirit or in flavor, but built from what the land offers and nothing more. No cream. No fuss! Just onion, peas and pasta (and optional pancetta or wild fennel). Oh and enough olive oil to make it sing.

Every family makes it slightly differently. Some add a little tomato. Some add pancetta or lard. But the bones are always the same, and the finish is always the same: a pour of good olive oil at the end, enough to make the broth glisten, enough to make the whole thing taste like someone loved you while they were cooking it. In pantofole, obviously.

Pasta e Piselli delle Pantofole (Recipe)

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 320g ditalini or tubetti pasta
• 400g fresh peas, shelled by small children if available (frozen work — but fresh are the point)
• 1 medium white onion, finely diced
• 1 liter light vegetable broth or water, kept warm
• Salt, to taste
• Parmigiano grated, 1 tablespoon per plate to finish
• Pegaso EVOO (to cook, and to finish, generously)

Method:

In a wide pot, warm a generous pour of olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion with a pinch of salt and cook slowly until soft and translucent — ten minutes at least, don't rush it. Add the peas and stir to coat everything in the oil. Add enough warm broth to just cover and simmer gently for about ten minutes, until the peas are tender and the broth has taken on their sweetness. Add the pasta directly to the pot and cook, adding more broth a ladle at a time as needed, until al dente and the whole thing sits somewhere between a thick soup and a sauced pasta — loose, never dry. Taste for salt. Finish with a tablespoon of grated Parmigiano and a generous pour of olive oil. Eat immediately, with bread. 

The olive oil is not a garnish. It is the final ingredient: the thing balances the sweetness of the peas and spring onion. Use the best you have! This dish is simple enough that every ingredient shows.

This is what spring tastes like :)

Good things take time, but some of the best recipes only take twenty minutes.

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Pasta ditalini/tubetti is a must!