This recipe is from Matt and Ted Lee of The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen, author of several terrific Southern cookbooks. Scale down according to the amount of peas in your bag. The recipe was written for butter beans, but will work just fine with your field peas.
About this recipe, they say:
Along with muscadine grapes, butter beans are among the farmer’s market treasures of late summer—reason to wake up with gusto to another day of stultifying heat and oxford-soaking humidity. We do all kinds of things with butter beans: we make a hummus-like spread for the cocktail hour, we simmer them with seasoning meats of all sorts, and we compose marinated salads aplenty. But this may be our most simple treatment yet, and one of the most satisfying.
Butter beans come in many varieties: Some beans are green with purple speckles, some are reddish brown, a few are ivory colored, and there’s a shade of green besides. For this simple side dish, we like to use the small green ones (though you may use frozen baby lima beans if butter beans aren’t in season).
Ingredients:
Kosher salt 6 cups fresh shelled field peas 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces Juice of 2 large limes 1 cup loosely packed mint leaves, chopped Freshly ground black pepper 1 teaspoon grated lime zest, for garnish
Preparation:
In a medium saucepan, bring 6 cups of water and 1 tablespoon salt to a boil over high heat. Add the butter beans and cook until tender, 9 to 12 minutes, depending on the size of the beans. Drain in a colander, and shake the colander several times to shed as much water from the beans as possible.
Put the butter in a large serving bowl, and pour the warm butter beans on top. Toss the beans with the butter until all the butter is melted. Add the lime juice and toss again to distribute. Fold in the mint, season with salt and black pepper, and scatter lime zest over the top. Serve immediately.
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