French style fresh peas

Leslie Geddes-Brown reveals the perfect way to prepare peas fresh from the garden

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peas

This is very simple, but makes a dish of newly podded fresh peas into something much more special.

You need

About ½lb peas in pods per person

Outer leaves of a lettuce

3 spring onions per person

Butter, sugar, salt and pepper

Pod the peas and drop them into boiling salted water with a touch of added sugar to taste. Add the lettuce leaves, which can be quite coarse, but not slug-eaten or damaged, plus the peeled spring onions cut into inch-long lengths. Boil until peas are tender about five minutes. Drain them and add a nut of butter on top. I think the lettuce and onions were once a way of bulking out a few peas, but this has now become a classic. It also works with frozen peas, out of season.

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