Black-Eyed Peas with Coriander and Greens

January 5, 2010

I chose this dish to start with because I associate black-eyed peas with the new year. Someone once told me that they are supposed to bring good fortune, but I think that only applies when you eat them on New Year's Day. I missed by 4 days, but perhaps the gods of fortune will smile on me anyway. I figure I get extra points with the kitchen gods because I cooked my own organic peas from scratch, rather than using frozen as the recipe suggested.

I'm going through the book in a completely random manner, by the way. I'm hoping to utilize ingredients when they are in season. This dish came from the chapter entitled "Hearty Cool Weather Suppers". In the introduction, Deborah Madison talks about supper as distinct from dinner. She says that it doesn't carry the formal expectation that dinner does. Supper is for when you bump into a friend at the farmer's market and invite them over to share the bounty. It's for a Sunday night or a Thursday. It can be far more casual and simple. This appeals to me.

The black-eyed peas dish, however, took me about an hour and a half to prepare. This is largely because I forgot to soak the peas earlier in the day. Here's how the evening went:

I rinsed the black-eyed peas and put them in a pot with boiling water to soak for an hour. Meanwhile I prepared 2 bunches of chard, coarsely chopping the leaves and finely chopping the stems. I used one bunch of rainbow chard and one bunch of red chard. The addition of the cut up stems was a great idea. I loved not throwing them away and they provided a lot of nice texture. The recipe also called for wild greens, which I didn't know where to find. The recommendations were amaranth, blanched nettles or wild greens. Does anyone know how to safely incorporate these into your cooking? Can you really just go pick dandelion greens from your lawn and eat them? Somehow this seems hazardous to me.

I then diced one onion, whacked up half a cup of cilantro and half a cup of parsley, diced a couple cloves of garlic and set all that aside. Then I started cooking the bulgur.

One of her tips for how to make cooking more enjoyable and economical is to use what you have. I already had course bulgur, so I used that instead of the fine or medium bulgur that was called for. By this time, my peas had been soaking for about 40 minutes, so I decided to just start cooking them.

I then cooked the onions in some olive oil until tender, added the cilantro, parsley, garlic, and diced chard stems and let that soften a bit. Then I added 1 T. tomato paste, some paprika, and the chopped greens, and seasoned with a little salt. I then put the cover on, turned down the heat to very low and let the greens cook until they were "meltingly tender" - her words - much more lovely than "falling apart" - my words. This took about 25 minutes.

When the peas were soft, I added them to the chard mixture along with some of their cooking liquid. I actually made a double batch of black-eyed peas and froze them so that I would have them on hand the next time I made this dish or a soup or something. Her recipe says to use 3 cups of water to cook the frozen peas in and then add all the water, so you know just how much to put in. I guessed. I checked for salt and pepper (usually one of my failings as a cook, but I remembered this time.)

By then the bulgur was done and I served the peas and greens over the bulgur, with a spoonful of greek yogurt on top. With the yogurt, this dish makes a complete protein. Without it, the dish is completely vegan.

This is a very unpretentious looking dish. It reminded me of the look of some Indian food. The flavors, however, are more Greek, so she recommended a spicy Greek red wine to go with it. I couldn't find one easily or cheaply, so I substituted an Italian red (2007 Terra Mia) from the Abruzzo region of Italy. That's where the earthquake was in April of last year. George and I visited this area and it is stunning. We raised a glass and wished for prosperity and healing for the Abruzzo region, and toasted our first sit-down, candle lit dinner of 2010.

The dish was SO delicious. It's interesting that it has coriander in the name of the dish, but no coriander seed - just cilantro. I always think of them as different, though I know they are the same plant. I guess half a cup of cilantro is quite a bit and it must have contributed significantly to the flavor. I would definitely like to make this one again. I think I could do it in under an hour using my extra peas in the freezer and my ever developing chopping skills.

This recipe serves 4, so we had leftovers that went into the freezer. I'll let you know if the freezing works out well.

If I made this dish again: I would soak and perhaps cook the black-eyed peas ahead of time, or use frozen peas. Otherwise, I wouldn't change a thing.

Cost to prepare:

1 cup black-eyed peas - .65

2 bunches chard - 4.60

cilantro - .20

parsley - .20

tomato paste - .20

bulgur - .45

onion - .50

Olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, paprika - negligible

TOTAL without wine = $6.80

Cost of wine - $8.99

Served 2 people, plus leftovers for another meal!