When I first started working in restaurant kitchens 20 years ago, the worst insult you could call a fellow cook was the colorful epithet “shoemaker.” The put-down, as it was explained to me, came from Shoemaker Potatoes, a Rotary Club-banquet favorite, twice-baked potatoes that were invariably kept warm under a glowing red heat lamp.
A shoemaker was a lazy hack of a cook, someone who always looked for the shortcut, used the deep fryer for everything, never cooked with fresh when frozen was available, and polluted classic recipes with suspect ingredients; a shoemaker made his duck-liver mousse with cream cheese and used cornstarch in his beurre blanc.
Though I still believe that you should use fresh ingredients whenever you can and make as much of your menu in house, I am not as doctrinaire about it as I used to be. I’ve eaten at enough well-meaning neighborhood joints that serve house-cut French fries that are brown, limp and greasy to realize that sometimes, the frozen product is better and more consistent than the fresh one.
This was brought home to me a few years ago after a meal at one of L.A.’s best and most famous restaurants. I ate dish after dish of flavorful, beautifully executed food, but no dish impressed me as much as a simple ravioli of English peas, garnished with goat cheese and petits pois no bigger than the pinkie fingernail of a newborn baby. After the meal, I peeked into the open kitchen and spotted a cook I had worked with in San Francisco. “Wow,” I said, “that sole and those sweetbreads … and that ravioli — I pity the poor culinary extern who’s got the job of shucking all those tiny peas for the filling.” My friend shook his head. “Are you kidding?” he said. “We use frozen. They are always sweet and they’re always consistent.”
Since then, I have used frozen peas to make my purees and fillings. At the restaurant, we buy fresh and local, including from a community garden two blocks away, but I have to say I’ve never found a farmer who grows peas the way I like them — evenly tiny and sweet. The pea puree at left, which garnishes a dish of scallops with mushrooms and chorizo, combines frozen peas with cream and a little bit of potato. Make sure you have a powerful blender to mix the puree — in the restaurant we use a Vita-Mix.
John Broening cooks at Olivea restaurant in Denver, .
Sweet Pea Puree
Makes about 5 cups.
Ingredients
3 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
One 2-pound package of frozen peas
1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons butter
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Directions
Place the potatoes in a small saucepan and cover with water. Add a large pinch of salt. Bring to a boil and simmer until tender. Drain; mash with a food mill or potato ricer along with the butter and keep warm.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add the peas. Bring back to a boil and simmer 5 minutes. Warm the cream. Drain the peas and puree in the blender along with the cream. Blend in the warm potatoes until the mixture is almost completely smooth. Season with salt and pepper.
Serve with scallops, pork chops or duck.
