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Here’s a pea shoots recipe for when you find them at the farmer’s market! This fancy toast features a chickpea mash, cream cheese, and pea shoots.

Pea Shoots Recipe | Fancy toast with pea shoots

There’s nothing more delightful than bright and happy pea shoots after a long, gray winter. We found these at the winter farmer’s market a few weeks ago, where the farmer happily cut off a bunch of the shoots growing out of a small flat. But how to make a pea shoots recipe? We went home, Googled a bit, and came up with this one. Keep reading for our pea shoots recipe!

Pea shoots recipe

What are pea shoots?

First of all: what are pea shoots? Pea shoots are simply baby pea plants that are cut before they grow into actual peas. The fun part is that they taste like a bite of concentrated spring; just like a pea, but more delicate and leafy. You can use them in salads, on stir fries, on sandwiches, and more. You can also grow them in your garden: simply harvest the pea plants while they look like tender shoots, before they grow into pea plants.

How to make this pea shoots recipe

What we decided on for our pea shoots was…fancy toast! Here we’ve made fancy toast or a tartine – French for “open faced sandwich”. This pea shoots recipe combines the tender green shoots with a delicious Greek yogurt cheese from our farmer’s market (from Trader’s Point Creamery here in Indianapolis). We also added a chickpea mash for some extra protein — which was actually quite good itself! If you can’t find yogurt cheese, you can use any type of cream cheese, or even make homemade yogurt cheese (it’s actually quite easy – here’s our recipe for labneh / yogurt cheese).

This fancy toast with pea shoots recipe was so tasty: it was the perfect simple lunch! You could also use it as an appetizer before a dinner party, or a filling snack. Have you made a pea shoots we should know about? Let us know if you’re inspired to try them out.

Pea shoots recipe | pea shoot salad
Other pea shoots recipes: Pea Shoot Salad with Arugula & Parmesan

Looking for another pea shoots recipe?

We’ve made a few pea shoots recipes: here are some of our favorite ways to use pea shoots!

Looking for lunch ideas?

Outside of this fancy toast with pea shoots recipe, here are a few other lunch ideas:

This recipe is…

This recipe is vegetarian. For vegan, plant-based and dairy-free, omit the yogurt spread; consider using cashew cream or vegan mayo.

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Fancy Toast with Pea Shoots Recipe

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Here’s a pea shoots recipe for when you find them at the farmer’s market! This fancy toast features a chickpea mash, cream cheese, and pea shoots.

  • Author: a Couple Cooks
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cook Time: 0 minutes
  • Total Time: 10 minutes
  • Yield: 4 large pieces 1x
  • Category: Lunch
  • Method: Mixed
  • Cuisine: American

Ingredients

Scale
  • 15-ounce can chickpeas (or 1 ½ cups cooked)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • ½ tablespoon balsamic vinegar
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • Fresh ground pepper
  • 6 slices peasant bread
  • 6 ounces cream cheese or yogurt cheese / labneh (we used local Honey Lemon Greek Yogurt Cheese from Trader’s Point Creamery)
  • 1 bunch pea shoots

Instructions

  1. Drain and rinse the chickpeas, if using canned. In a small bowl, mash together chickpeas, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, kosher salt, and fresh ground pepper using a fork.
  2. Cut the slices of bread and toast them if desired. Place each bread slice open-face on a plate, spread with cream cheese and chickpea mash, and top with pea shoots.

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About the authors

Alex & Sonja

Hi! We’re Alex & Sonja Overhiser, authors of the acclaimed cookbooks A Couple Cooks and Pretty Simple Cooking—and a real life couple who cooks together. We founded the A Couple Cooks website in 2010 to share seasonal recipes and the joy of home cooking. Now, we’ve got over 3,000 well-tested recipes, including Mediterranean diet, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, smoothies, cocktails, and more!

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14 Comments

  1. a farmer in the dell says:

    These look absolutely lovely. A great afternoon pick-me-up!

  2. Traders Point Creamery says:

    What a lovely way to use local foods from our Winter Green Market! Thank you for this delightfully spring-y recipe and for your support of our small local food producers. You inspire us!

    1. Sonja says:

      You are so welcome! YOU inspire us with your wonderful products – it is an honor to make use of them!

  3. Meghan {For the Love of Dessert} says:

    Reading this made me go “100% spring. Not from concentrate” in my head. I love the colors here and I’ll have to get my hands on some concentrated spring too!

    1. Sonja says:

      Haha, you won’t be disappointed either! Let us know if you try some shoots and what you think! :)

  4. Joanne says:

    I love all of the bright flavors in these!! Concentrated spring does sound good to me!

  5. Katrina @ Warm Vanilla Sugar says:

    Oh yum!! This looks like such a fabulous snack!

  6. Cookin Canuck says:

    I love the simplicity of these flavors. What a wonderful way to highlight the pea shoots!

    1. Sonja says:

      Thank you so much, Dara!

  7. Eileen says:

    This looks so good! I can’t wait until the pea shoots start cropping up in our farmer’s market. Plus I’m always looking for more ways to get labneh into my mouth. :)

  8. Beata says:

    Seems totally amazing, I so have to try this!

  9. Jacqueline says:

    That does look rather wonderful and my rumbling stomach is telling me it’s time for lunch!

  10. Adri says:

    You are so right about the pea shoots. Harbingers of Spring, the brighten both plate and spirit. This looks wonderful. Compliments!

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