As a young chef, first running my own kitchen at the Quat'Saisons in Oxford, I got my produce exactly in the way we did at home in France. From May-October my young English brigade of three and I fetched up at the pick-your-own at 5 in morning. This was the way I'd been brought up: if you want peas - you harvest them yourself. English friends thought this eccentric, and when they saw what was in our baskets, they thought we were crazy - tender pea shoots with the flower barely formed, or baby courgettes with the flower still attached. Everyone else at the pick-your-own was looking for swollen pods with the fattest peas, or the biggest, heaviest, marrow-like courgettes. Later in the season people were aghast at the jaw-dropping eccentricity of this Frenchman who picked the flowers of rocket plants and the seed heads of coriander.

When I acquired the Manoir, it was essential that there was a large kitchen garden. For me, as a Frenchman, that's the way gastronomy works: if you want a pea experience, the earth is not quite enough - you need the right variety, too. So with our head gardener, Anne Marie, we made trials to find the best varieties.

One of our biggest treats when I was a boy was the first picking of peas from Maman Blanc's garden; we harvested the peas only just before she cooked the meal, as the sweetness of peas deteriorates noticeably in a matter of hours. (This is why consumers all over the world prefer rapidly frozen peas to fresh peas bought in the shops, which are, sadly, always a few days old.)

Peas are fantastic - you can use the entire plant - the seed, pod and growing shoot (at the top of the plant) are all sweetly edible. Most garden varieties have a tough inner lining making the pod inedible. Modern "sugar snap" peas have tender pods without this lining; picked while the developing peas are immature, these are called mangetouts.

For the gardener, peas are half hardy (meaning they do not like frost), and are a good source of protein, carbohydrates, fibre, iron and vitamin C. For the farmer the pea plays an important role, as it takes nitrogen from the atmosphere and, using the nodules attached to its root system, fixes the nitrogen in the soil, reducing the need for man-made fertilisers.

Now (mid-April) until mid-June is the time to sow peas directly into the soil. The pea shoots are ready to use in salads and as a garnish about 4 weeks; mangetout pods take about 8 weeks from sowing to harvesting and peas themselves about 12 weeks.

Here at Le Manoir we grow chiefly varieties of Sugar Snap called, "Sugar Ann," and also "Dwarf Sweet Green," because in trials we have found that they are the sweetest, and especially useful for pea shoots. Use pea shoots raw in salads and garnishes, or blanch and refresh in iced water to add to mixed vegetable dishes. Pick the pods young enough, and they don't need stringing, and can even be used for purée, or blanched, in salads.

When it comes to eating the peas, not the pods, you have to grow a variety that can be cooked in their infancy as petit pois. Good ones include "Celebration" from Thompson & Morgan, and "PeaWee" from Marshalls, but the most popular, easy-to-find, is "Waverex" from Tuckers, Chiltern and loads of other seed merchants.

Get to know your peas before you cook them. If you've picked them tiny enough, you only need to warm them through with a knob of butter plus 2 or 3 tablespoons of water to cover them, which will make a delicious emulsion. Or use olive oil instead of butter, and add some finely shredded lettuce, or mint or marjoram. Speed is of the essence, though, so as to keep their texture, colour and sweetness. But the briefest exposure to heat is enough - they're only babies, after all.

Bon appetit.