Pisello

Eaten as a vegetable, usually as an accompaniment to meat, they can find wonderful expression on their own. My mother used to use them for pasta e piselli - the piselli were very sweet, and I always helped to pod them and more than the odd one disappeared into my mouth. For this dish, the pasta my mother made was without egg, just flour and water. For the sauce, a little prosciutto was fried with onion in a pan, and then the peas were added with a little water to cook gently. The dish was finished with a sprinkling of olive oil and pepper on top. The sweetness of the fresh peas still lingers on my taste buds.