This Pea, Mint and Feta Salad came home with me on a Tuesday afternoon, packed into the muscle memory of my hands after a slow food walk through Borough Market in Southwark. I had booked the tour expecting cheeseboards and oysters. I left thinking about peas.
The guide was a woman named Eliza who had spent eight years cooking in Sydney before she moved to South London. She kept threading us through the side aisles, past the obvious truffle stalls and the salt boys, toward the smaller producers where she knew the owners by name. I trailed at the back with my notebook and a paper cup of cold coffee.
The Stall at Borough Market
We stopped at Oliveology, a small Greek producer near the Stoney Street end. The woman behind the counter, Marianna, pulled out a tub of feta in brine and broke off a piece with her thumb. She handed it to me without a word.
It tasted like sea and grass. Eliza, leaning on the wood counter, told the group that the easiest thing she ever cooked in her Sydney café years was a salad of peas, mint and this exact feta. Three minutes, blanch and dress, done. She drew the order in the air with her hands.
Marianna nodded like she had heard this story a hundred times. She probably had.
The rest of the tour drifted ahead toward the wine arch. I lingered for another minute, watching Marianna wrap the feta. Market noise pressed in around us, fish guys yelling out on Stoney Street, a knife sharpener spinning sparks outside a side door.
I bought a tub of feta. I bought a small bunch of mint from the herb stall two rows over, even though I knew it would not survive the flight. I wrote down what Eliza had said on the back of a coffee receipt, then got on the Jubilee Line and turned the salad over in my head the whole way to the hotel.
Why Pea, Mint and Feta Salad Isn’t What You Think
I want to be honest about this. The salad is not ancient. It is not a recipe handed down from a yiayia in Crete or a grandmother in Naxos. It is a modern café invention, born in the late nineties and early two thousands, popularised by the kind of bright, herb-forward cooking that Bill Granger made famous in his Sydney cafés and that London copied through the 2000s.
That does not make it less good. It makes it honest. The combination borrows from much older Greek pairings, peas with mint as a meze, lamb with mint at Easter, feta with herbs at any table. Someone in a café simply put them all on one plate with lemon and olive oil instead of mayonnaise. That was the leap.
And it is nothing like the American pea salad with cheddar and bacon and gloop. Different planet.
What I Used
- 3 cups of green peas. I used frozen, which I will defend in a minute.
- 6 oz of Greek feta in brine. A block from the cheese counter at the Mediterranean grocer a few blocks from my apartment, drained but not rinsed.
- Half a cup of fresh mint, loosely packed. Torn by hand, never chopped.
- 3 tablespoons of good olive oil. I keep a nicer Kalamata bottle for finishing and a cheaper one for cooking. This is a finishing job.
- 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, about half a lemon.
- Half a teaspoon of sea salt, plus more for the blanching water.
- A quarter teaspoon of black pepper, cracked fresh.
Cooking It Back in My Own Kitchen
I made the salad two days after I got home. Saturday morning, the kind of soft grey LA morning that almost never happens and feels stolen when it does. I had Patti Smith on low. The kitchen window was cracked open and the mint smelled stronger than it had any right to.
I boiled a small pan of water and threw in a generous tablespoon of salt. While it heated I filled my big stainless bowl with ice and cold tap water. The peas went in for ninety seconds. Not two minutes. Ninety. The first time I tried this in a hotel kitchenette in London I let them go for three minutes and they slumped into army green. Eliza had warned me. I had not listened.
Out of the boil, straight into the ice. One minute, then drain, then pat dry on the linen towel I keep on the handle of my oven. Excess water dilutes everything.
I whisked the dressing in a small ceramic bowl a friend brought back for me from Lisbon. Olive oil, lemon, salt, pepper. Tasted it off the back of a wooden spoon, added another small pinch of salt, whisked again. Tossed the peas, tore the mint over the top, crumbled the feta in generous chunks over everything.
Crumbled. Not stirred. This matters more than most people think.
I served it shallow, in a wide pottery dish, alongside grilled lamb chops and a cold glass of Assyrtiko my neighbour had carried back for me from Santorini. The peas held their colour for nearly an hour on the table. The leftovers, I ate cold, standing at the open fridge. Better than they had any right to be.
Frozen Peas and Other Small Opinions
I prefer frozen peas to most fresh supermarket peas. There. I said it. Frozen peas are picked at peak sweetness and flash frozen within hours. The fresh ones at the chain stores have usually sat in a chiller for a week and lost their sugar. The only fresh peas worth shelling are the ones I find at the Hollywood Farmers Market in April, and even then I race them home before the sugar turns to starch.
The first time I made this back home I stirred the feta in early because I wanted every bite to taste of it. Within five minutes the salad went cloudy and pasty. Looked like a sad coleslaw. The feta has to stay in distinct briny pieces against the sweet peas, or the whole thing loses its contrast.
Same goes for the mint. A knife bruises it and the cut edges blacken within the hour. Tear it. Use your fingers.
If you have a really good lemon, use a little zest as well as the juice. It adds a perfume the juice alone misses. I almost added a pinch of chilli flakes the second time around. Actually no. The feta is plenty bold and the mint does the lift.
This one stays in my regular rotation. Cheap, fast, almost no cooking. The kind of plate that makes a Saturday lunch feel like more than a Saturday lunch.
Pea, Mint And Feta Salad
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Bring a medium saucepan of water to a rolling boil and season it generously with salt, about 1 tablespoon. While the water heats, fill a large mixing bowl with cold water and plenty of ice cubes.
- Add the peas to the boiling water and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until they turn bright green and are just tender but still slightly firm. Do not overcook.
- Drain the peas immediately in a colander and tip them straight into the ice bath. Let them sit for 1 minute to stop the cooking and lock in their color.
- Drain the peas thoroughly and pat them dry with a clean kitchen towel. Excess water will dilute the dressing.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the extra virgin olive oil, fresh lemon juice, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper until emulsified.
- Transfer the dried peas to a wide, shallow salad bowl. Pour the dressing over the peas and toss gently to coat.
- Tear the mint leaves by hand and scatter them over the peas, folding through lightly so they don't bruise.
- Crumble the Greek feta over the top of the salad in generous chunks. Do not stir it in. Taste, adjust salt and pepper, and serve immediately.