Crustaceans and Snaps

I had gotten out of the habit of using sugar snap peas. Don't ask me why - they are a delicious addition to all kinds of dishes - but I had. I guess I overdosed on them a while back; I hadn't bought any in perhaps two years.

Then, just when the selection in the produce section at my favorite supermarket was looking decidedly uninteresting, with little of local interest to offer besides six kinds of greens we'd been eating all winter and the stalwart broccoli, there were the sugar snaps!

I ate one or two as I stripped out the strings and was reminded just how crisp and delicately crunchy they are. As green as an Irish spring and crisp, sweet and bright-flavored, what could be nicer to wake up a plate of food? I used them about a week ago with pasta, so this time I was more in a stir-steam-sauté kind of mood. With a package of shrimp from the freezer, I had dinner in no time.

Not only were the sugar snaps the essence of spring, so was the green garlic. I sautéed two chopped spears of green garlic in a little butter with some of my fresh thyme from the garden, little lavender flowers and leaves stripped off the woody parts of the stems, before adding the sugar snaps for about one minute, then the shrimps and the water from their package (less than 1/4 cup) for another minute or two. The shrimps got so pink and curly that I expected to hear giggles while the sugar snaps got even greener and sweeter, if that's possible. The mellow little goozle that formed at the bottom of the pan was officially declared the elixir of the gods of spring.

I settled them onto our plates next to a brown rice pilaf (more about that later) and we dove in to our plates of crustaceans and snaps for an easy-pleasy spring dinner.