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Whenever I want to time-travel back to my early 20s, to my 150-square-foot studio apartment where I cosplayed being an adult, all I have to do is put on a Girls’ Generation record and thumb through the yellowed paperbacks on my bookshelf. Years in the making, the bulging shelves are precariously loaded and destabilizing by the minute, but they reflect a life well lived in New York City, where moving books from apartment to apartment is no easy feat. That early era was also when, during a graduate program in literature, I first learned to cook for myself in a proper way. I had many teachers then, but my culinary guide was the doyenne of frozen peas, Nigella Lawson. As her voice emanated to my left from a laptop that played episodes of her first show, “Nigella Bites” (bootlegged to YouTube at the time), and her first book, “How to Eat,” balanced on a music stand to my right, I became the cook I am today. In that kitchenette, I roasted my first chicken, assembled my first trifle and learned for the first time that, if you boil a bag of frozen peas, then drain and blend them, you’ll have a near-instant side dish that goes down pretty easily. Recipe: Mushy Peas Classically a dull-green accompaniment to fish and chips, mushy peas are the unsung hero of English “comfort sludge,” as the food writer Ruby Tandoh calls it. You might not always appreciate their presence, but if they were missing from the plate, you would notice. For my friend Joanna Goddard, the writer, who is both English and American, it’s not unlike the role of coleslaw in a basket of fried things. “Mushy peas are the virtuous moment of a platter of fish and chips,” she texted me recently, emphasizing their many merits. “I like that they’re mushy, but there’s still texture; they’re bright but still comfort food. “Even the name is perfect!” she said. “Mushy peas! Like a 5-year-old named them.” The original chip-house mushy peas come from dried marrowfat peas, which mature and even dry out on the plant. Indelibly savory, with scents of buttered popcorn and umami incarnate, they’re hard to come by outside Britain (though you can certainly order them online). “There’s something very confusing about the fact that they are described as ‘peas,’ even though they are essentially a dried legume,” my British friend Bee Wilson, the food writer, wrote to me by email. They are “more like Britain’s answer to dal,” she said, “but without the spice or joy.” Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
