Peas with onions

Eastside Road, September 11, 2013—

EVERY NOW AND THEN the cook here will do something so uncharacteristic, so completely unexpected, that I'm thrown quite off my guard. Don't get me wrong: she rarely makes a mistake, and if you've noticed a regularity, a consistency, even what some might call a restricted repertory at our table, well, that's the way we both like it. But now and then she throws a curve.

Today, for example, she sent me shopping without specifying the list. A couple of avocados, she said, and a green vegetable. Not broccoli, or green beans, or even lettuce: just a green vegetable.

I knew we were having baked potatoes, and Franco's sausage. What to put with them? I settled for half a dozen small artichokes — artichokes go so well with sausage — and, almost as an afterthought, because someone had mentioned them earlier today, a package of frozen organic English peas, and half a dozen little boiling onions.

The potatoes fairly stole the show — Bodega Reds, whatever they are, creamy and fragrant and delicate and delicious. Franco calls these his Ecuadorean sausages, I'm not sure why; they taste of chili pepper but not overwhelmingly, and hint at nutmeg, and are a mixture I think of pork and I would say veal except that that's so unlikely in this country.

Peas and little onions are Elective Affinities, like peas and marjoram, and peas with butter. They're out of season, of course, but I had the whim. The artichokes will have to wait; the avocado went into the green salad, along with lettuce from the garden.

red bottle-ends