Fresh produce can have an extremely limited shelf life; I have to stay on my toes to make sure we eat the produce we bought from the farmers' market before it loses its flavor. This last weekend, I wanted to build a meal around the remaining legumes--peas and fava beans--residing in our refrigerator. By this time last week, I had already incorporated the snow peas into a delicious stir fry, complete with homegrown baby carrots and beets (baby because I had to prune to make room for their siblings to grow larger) and I used the snap peas in a side salad with lime, brown sugar, and carrots. This left me with shelling peas and fava beans.

I turned to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall for inspiration. We now own both River Cottage Veg Everyday and River Cottage Everyday, and I frequently find myself flipping through both books, admiring the photography and the ease with which Whittingstall incorporates flavors in replicable ways.

If you've eaten in the British Isles, you probably picked up on the fact that mushy peas are a pivotal part of nearly any meal. They're a traditional side dish to fish and chips and savory pies and you'll find them on the menu thm in a variety of pubs and restaurants.

Knowing this, I wasn't surprised when I flipped to a pea salad recipe in River Cottage Everyday: of course a British cookbook would have a pea recipe! And because Whittingstall is a champion of seasonal and local cooking, he helps the fresh peas shine instead of mushing them into oblivion. This means that the pea salad depends on fresh shelling peas. You could replicate the recipe with frozen peas, but the flavor wouldn't be nearly as crisp and snappy. Because preparing this side is so straightforward, I didn't anticipate how nuanced the dish would taste. By slowly sauteeing spring onions, almost to the point of carmelization, and mixing those onions with a light olive oil dressing and crumbly cheese, the peas transformed from an unassuming Spring delicacy to a mature side dish that would pair equally well with meat, at a barbeque, or with the dish I matched it with: fava beans on toast.

We don't cook with meat at home often, at most twice a month, so when we do have meat in the house, we source it from the best possible purveyor (in this case, Olympic Provisions) and aim to make the meat shine, whether it's in a fall macaroni dish or the New England style baked beans I recently made. Along with mushy peas and fish and chips, beans on toast has to rank in the top 5 most familiar British dishes. (But remember: kidneys on toast are actual kidneys, not kidney beans! I don't think Justin will ever forget that fact!)

Rather than baked beans, this beans on toast recipe takes advantage of the nutty fava bean flavor and slightly oily bacon, making each bite pleasing and complex.