With the first light of dawn, Borja López Pardo hangs his jute bag around his neck and walks through the green rows of his teardrop pea farm in Las Górgolas, a fairytale town in a lost valley in Arcentales (Vizcaya). It’s cold and the morning damp seeps through the collar of the coat. But that humidity that covers any surface exposed to the elements with dew feels fabulous to the most expensive vegetable in the world.
A national food website is offering this week tubs with 50 grams of teardrop peas at 24 euros. The bill comes out quickly: 480 euros for a kilo of the so-called vegetable caviar «cultivated in small plots of sustainable orchards located on the edge of the Cantabrian cliffs, on the coast of Getaria (Guipúzcoa). Here, our friends from Aroa grow this pea that comes from seeds that have been passed down in the family for more than 120 years and that they keep as if it were a treasure”, they present. Aroa is the pioneer firm in the cultivation and marketing of this pea and its manager, Jaime Burgaña, a defender of these little green buttons that give off “sweet and saline notes” and that he sells to chefs like Dabiz Muñoz (DiverXO) for his menu of the Flying Pigs.
In a kilo of those tender and immature little peas that explode in the mouth giving away an innocent texture, a drop of vegetable sap and the immaculate sweetness that accompanies newly created things, there may be between 10,000 and 12,000 pieces, depending on the variety and the time of collection.
Borja López shows the first teardrop peas of this spring.
J.Germany
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Borja López Pardo, from the company Artzentales Eko, has been and is a supplier to Biscayan restaurants with a Michelin star. He was one of the pioneers in cultivating this legume in the Basque Country that yields a lot, yes, but also requires a lot of attention and manpower. Borja plants the same peas that his grandmother Carmen selected for decades in these borderlands. “It is the variety that best adapts to the soil and climate of the region,” he sighs as he plucks a capsule from its peduncle with precision, lifts the pod and holds it up to the light. «My grandmother had a gift, she would throw a grain on the ground and it would come out; she always saved the best to make seed », she recalls.
“Nine Peas in a Pod”
Lively, climber and resistant, the first crop of the pea plant, which will grow in the greenhouse to reach the tables in early April, is sown in November. One by one. In the furrow that is later covered with the hoe and covered with sheep waste and the compost that Borja’s farm generates. «My grandmother, the truth, would not understand what we do with peas, picking them so immature: before, they wanted them to ripen well to eat at home».
«My variety has nine peas per pod. It has enormous culinary value; but it requires terrible work, it is very tricky: you have to get up early to pull it out of the bush and not lose water, take advantage of the smoothness of the pod that night brings, take it to the camera and peel it quickly. It takes a lot of peas to make kilos », he explains.
Borja pays ten euros an hour to the countrywomen who help him till and peel the peas. «For every ten kilos of pods, one of teardrop peas comes out. It takes about four hours to get the kilo”, says who has been a supplier of these “immature” for Txema Llamosas (Casa Garras), Álvaro Garrido (from Mina), Josemi Olazabalaga (Aizian) or Josean Alija (Nerua), among others cooks who pursue that chlorophyll burst and the faint crackling of the new sap of each spring.
Josean Alija (Nerua) is passionate about the teardrop pea that defines spring at his home. This season, with a sphere of black sauce.
Maika Salguero
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«I have been cooking with teardrop peas in Bilbao since 2000. But I met him before, with Martín Berasategui in Lasarte. He is like a beating heart, full of plant colony. For me it represents everything I look for on earth: it is seasonal, it does not travel well and you establish an immediate connection with it. That tiny, crunchy sphere, sweet, bitter and fresh at the same time, is purity and magic. For us it is the banner of Basque products and traditional agriculture”, explains Josean Alija. “Expensive? The costly thing is knowing how to wait. It is a product that requires time », he says.
This year (each season Alija varies the presentation of the teardrop pea) he serves it with a sphere of black sauce. «A warm broth made from apple, celery and white tea goes very well. At home, it is best to make a stir-fry with garlic, spring onion and chilli, so that it is like a whole jam, then add a teaspoon of hake broth, add the peas, cover with a lettuce leaf, let it cook for a minute over very low heat , take out and lock with an egg yolk”, says the genius of Nerua. Take note of the recipe, try (any pea is fine, adjusting the cooking time) and you’ll tell me.
Txema Llamosas (Casa Garras), one of the Biscayan chefs who first opted for them. Here, with green sauce, cod tripe and flower.
P. grandson
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Txema Llamosas (Casa Garras) saw in her time as an intern at elBulli the care with which Ferran Adrià treated the Maresme teardrop pea in Cala Montjoi. So when she took over the reins of the family eatery in the Laconcha neighborhood and contacted her half-neighbor Borja López, Artzentales’s tears immediately settled into a letter. «Before, peas were not understood like this. They are more of a texture than a flavor. It is the most expensive vegetable that exists because it takes a lot of work to shell it. Here, at home, my grandmother Pilar and Carmen, the lady who has taken care of us, have spent hours and hours shelling peas and broad beans while they watched the soap opera, chatted and drank coffee,” she smiles. Llamosas prepares them in green sauce with sweet cod tripe and just 30 seconds over the fire (30 euros for a generous portion).
María Lasquibar, from the KEA in Vitoria with the vegetable caviar that comes from the Maresme and that she serves with ham broth, egg yolk and sliced Portobello.
white castle
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Of the same Mediterranean origin (from Petrás) he serves peas at the KEA in Vitoria María Lasquibar. «In the kitchen we scald it for 10 seconds so that it takes on that powerful green colour. Then it has ham bone broth, ham salt, an egg yolk and laminated portobello. It is a non-carte dish (27 euros) that comes out a lot because the client knows how to value an exceptional product. It is a luxury that we can enjoy a couple of months a year”, says María Lasquibar.
Beñat Ormaetxea is already serving snap peas from Jon Bastante’s farm (Ibarra Baserria) with farmhouse eggs in his Jauregibarria.
F. Gomez
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Beñat Ormaetxea (Jauregibarria, Amorebieta-Etxano) also extols this living, recent, but irrepressible passion for vegetable caviar, so lively and tasty “that it can be eaten raw”. «It is 100% a local product; the flag of our spring », says Ormaetxea who serves them at his house with eggs from the same farmhouse in the Arratia valley that brings him the peas. Ormaetxea also use the pod to make a super chlorophyll broth. A trick: with a little bit of sodium bicarbonate in the cooking water, the chlorophyll turns the color of the dress of Miss Scarlet herself! (O’Hara, of course).
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