There’s a fairytale about a princess and a pea. You’ve probably heard it before. If you haven’t, the gist is essentially that a princess is faced with a test: to sleep on a thousand towering mattresses underneath which has been placed one, tiny pea. If she’s a real princess, her disposition will be so delicate that the pea will disturb her slumber. Only after passing this test can she marry the prince. Logically, we all know that a tender pea would smoosh beneath the weight of all those mattresses–because peas are the princesses of the vegetable world. (Yeah, yeah, yeah: peas aren’t vegetables, they’re legumes. I’m speaking colloquially. Don’t be a turnip about it–because turnips are the assholes of the vegetable world.)
Delicate, sweet, and tender–peas are what little girls were taught they should be by a gender-role-conforming society. The flavor of peas is so delicate that they can easily be overpowered and lost in a dish. To most palates, peas are inoffensive for this reason. They’re easy to stomach. So what happens when we stop pushing peas to the side of the plate–rendering them merely a supporting role to a meaty main dish–and start exalting them for their inherent natural beauty and innately special qualities? Alchemy. That’s what we experienced at The Pea Tasting Dinner at Junk Ditch last evening–pure alchemy. The menu didn’t just utilize peas–all P’s were present from pasta, to peaches, to prosciutto and other pork products. (See what I did there?)
The amuse-bouche was a parmigiano-reggiano crisp topped with several dollops of goat cheese mousse, shallot, greens, pickled mustard, and of course–peas. This delicate bite was slightly precarious to eat daintily, but the symphony of flavors made the dangerous feat more than worth it. This canape-adjacent treat is something that I would more than happily enjoy time and time again. If a friend invited me over to enjoy a small plate of this little nibble, I’d gladly bust out the good wine. But, then again, my opinion is biased–because I think anything with a goat cheese mousse is pure heaven. Needless to say, this was an exceptional way to begin our meal.
Our first course of the evening was a spring pea and mint soup. I think often the thought of pea soup evokes memories of an ultra thick, relatively creamy, army green, semi-smoky, ham-laden soup. This soup was anything but. To begin, the color was the epitome of spring pea green. The soup was luscious and silky–but it wasn’t particularly thick. I really liked the texture. Chef Andrew and his team always surprise me with the soup course and this was no exception. Though this may have been one of the most simple soups I’ve tasted at a Junk Ditch tasting dinner, it may have also been my favorite. The mint flavor was delicate and didn’t overpower the sweet, earthiness of the peas. Between the ultra well-balanced, subtle, simple flavors and the absolute velveteen texture of this soup, there was nothing not to love about it. Our meal had only just begun and already I was certain that the evening was headed in the direction of utter perfection–and sheeeesh, was I right.
The salad course consisted of petite greens, strawberry, shallots, dill, chives, pickled mustard, and chèvre all dressed in a Pinot Noir reduction. I will be honest with you: I am not a big fan of strawberries. But, if you’ve been around for a while and read other blogs I’ve written, you’ve probably gathered that I will try anything at a tasting dinner–even a food that I think I don’t like–because most of the time I end up enjoying whatever is presented to me on the plate. Chefs know what they’re doing; for real. This salad was no exception. One bite and I found myself happily and eagerly gobbling down strawberries. Did it help that there was a healthy amount of chèvre (aka goat cheese) on this plate? Of course it did. If you fed me wallpaper paste with goat cheese, I’d probably eat it. However, this salad was lightyears ahead of wallpaper paste. The herbs and greens played nicely to create a backdrop for pops of sweet strawberries, creamy chèvre, and brightly acidic mustard. The Pinot Noir reduction was silky and seductive, tying the whole dish together beautifully. If every salad in the world tasted like this one, I’d never need to eat anything but salad to feel happy and satisfied. Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, because there is one thing that my soul will long for eternally: pasta.
I am a pasta fiend and I won’t be apologizing for it. Luckily for me, Chef Andrew is truly in his pasta era. (Can we start trending #pastaera for Chef, please?) The third course was our pasta course featuring potato agnolotti, sage cream, snap peas, and crispy prosciutto. When I tell you that this is one of my most favorite pasta dishes that I’ve ever eaten–you better pick up what I’m putting down. I’ve always been a pea girl. I wish they were more often utilized in more places–so this tasting menu was really a dream for me. Even more so when you realize this menu wasn’t just abouts ‘peas’ because really it was about ‘P’s.’ This pasta was packed with a potato filling creating a purely paradisiacal plate topped with peas and crispy prosciutto: what more could a girl ask for? (See what I did again?) Oh yeah…a sage cream sauce, which has nothing to do with peas or P’s, but it does please me immensely. There were crunchy sage leaves atop this dish, too. Did we ask for spoons so that we could scrape every last pea and drop of cream sauce from the bottoms of our bowls? Perhaps. Was it worth it? Palpably.
Our entrée was pork served in a sea of gnocchetti, asparagus, peas, rosemary, and absolutely divine pork jus. The pork was delicious, but it was truly everything else on the plate that elevated this simple meat to a seriously stunning dish. The gnocchetti serves as further proof that Chef Andrew is in his pasta era. Did we ask for bread to sop up the pool of pork jus left behind on our plates when every last bite of meat, pasta, and veg had long since vanished? Yes, we most certainly did. No regrets. Are you picking up on a theme here? There were two dishes in a row my dining companions and I basically agreed that the flavors were too special to allow even a single drop to be wasted; we wanted to savor every last morsel. But if you think these last few plates were special, just wait until I tell you about dessert.
For dessert, a poached peach was nestled under a blanket of yuzu cream with a small scoop of Verjus sorbet and a delicate sprinkling of palm sugar crumble. Consider my mind utterly and completely blown. The peach provided some level of sweetness. The yuzu cream was almost incomprehensibly delicious; both lusciously creamy and perfectly tart. Then, of course, there was the Verjus sorbet–which I can only liken to the experience of eating a seriously sour lemon Italian ice when you were a little kid. Take that specific sense memory. Age it. Elevate it. Keep all the sweet and sour of it, but none of the childhood simplicity. That’s what Verjus sorbet tastes like. All together, these elements were exquisite–but then there was the crumble. My god, the crumble! A salty burst–but it was so much more than that. Buttery and nutty, this complexly flavored crumble added more than just texture to the dessert’s already dynamic topography. It added subtle nuanced flavors that enhanced the entire experience to a point for which I no longer have words. This dessert was too good to describe. I think it’s very likely that last night was the first and only time in my life that I will have the pleasure of experiencing this exact dessert–which means I will spend the rest of my life missing it. Truly the most beautiful and heartbreaking love story of our time. Desserts shouldn’t be allowed to be this good.
This was the first tasting dinner that I opted out of alcohol. Pairing wine and food is maybe one of my favorite pastimes. A good pairing means that both the wine and the food are elevated. But, I do it so often that I’ve almost forgotten that a really good meal doesn’t require alcohol to make it better–the dishes should shine on their own. So, I joined my N/A homies last night and went wine-free to see how delicious peas can really be in the death defying feat of being featured on a dinner plate; like walking a tightrope without a net. Is anyone surprised that peas were more than prepared to rise to the occasion?
Plonk & Pleasure 
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