Not my mama's black eyed peas & greens

Black eyed peas with Indian spices. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Visit my mom’s house on New Year’s Day and you will be treated to simple, humble fare – a black-as-midnight cast iron skillet sizzling with buttermilk cornbread, a pot of black-eyed peas and a bowl of greens, usually collards. The peas and greens are usually cooked with pork, such as the leftover bone from the Thanksgiving ham. And if you’re lucky, there will be a jar of  chow-chow from a friend’s summer canning frenzy; the relish makes a fine garnish for the black-eyed peas.

It’s kind of endemic to the Southern experience that the Way Mom (or Grandma) Cooks is the best and only way to cook. My mother is an excellent cook and I’ve learned much in her kitchen. At my mother’s apron strings, I learned dishes such as country fried steak and chicken & dumplings. I learned to make layer cakes, pound cakes and cookies. My mom taught me how to put together a meal, cooking the meat and vegetables in order so that everything is ready at the same time. She taught me her way, but she also taught me something else: to try new things. This is the most valuable lesson of all. Even in my suburban Georgia neighborhood, I have an incredible amount of ingredients and technology available to me, plus a world of information at my fingertips. I can choose to cook from my own little world or I can bring the world into my kitchen.

Which is why on New Year’s Day 2011, you will find the traditional black eyed peas flavored with garam masala, turmeric and cumin at my table. This recipe is adapted from Gene Lee, who writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and blogs at Eat, Drink, Man: a Food Journal. Instead of cooking the peas entirely on the stovetop, I start them off in a Dutch oven and place it in the oven on convection for an hour or more, for the peas to slowly soak up the spicy goodness.

Oven-Braised Black Eyed Peas with Indian Spices

A note on the chilies: the original recipe specifies three to six chilies. In the summer, I take the chilies and peppers from the CSA box, roast them together, seed them and freeze in a container. Whenever I need peppers or chilies, I break off a portion and use in the recipe. When making this recipe, I used about 1/2 cup of chopped, frozen chilies. 

8 ounces dried black-eyed peas
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons whole cumin seeds
4 cloves garlic, minced
1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced
2 chilies, chopped
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped into ¼ inch dice
 1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
¼ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon garam masala
2 cups water

1.      Pour peas onto a rimmed half sheet baking pan and pick out stones, debris and off-looking peas. Pour peas into a bowl and cover with water. Swish the peas, then pour off most of the water. Refill with water to cover peas by one inch and leave to soak for a few hours or overnight. Add water, if needed.

2.      When ready to cook, put a Dutch oven on the cooktop over medium heat and pour in oil. Add cumin seeds, garlic and ginger and stir for a minute. Add dry seasonings – salt, cayenne, turmeric and garam masala. Cook over medium heat for five minutes. If mixture is too dry, add a spoonful of water. Turn up the heat and add onions and chilies.

3.      Add peas and water and bring to a boil. Heat oven to 350. Place Dutch oven in real oven at 300 for at least one hour. Check liquid level occasionally. Peas should be done after an hour, but can continue to cook at low heat for several hours - be sure to check the liquid level and replenish with water as needed.

Beets and beet greens. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

     

  I’ve also tried a new method for cooking greens. I happen to think collards are great and consider the work involved – washing, trimming and chopping – a labor of love. But my family? Not so much. My  friend Susan’s recipe for Kale with Raisins and Pine Nuts has turned my husband and girls into greens eaters. Susan writes about produce on her blog, Thoughtful Consumption. Here is my adaptation of her recipe.

Kale and Beet Greens with raisins and pine nuts

There are many possible variations of this dish – any kind of green except for collards would work. (As much as I love collards, they’re just too tough for this quick treatment.). I used a bunch of kale plus some beet greens and it was terrific. Slivered almonds or roughly chopped walnuts could sub for the pine nuts.

2 tablespoons olive oil
¼ cup pine nuts
¼ cup raisins
1 bunch of greens such as kale or beet greens, or a combination of greens, washed and trimmed into 2-inch pieces
Salt and pepper to taste

1.  In a skillet over medium heat, pour in olive oil. Add pine nuts and raisins, stirring and cooking until pine nuts are golden and raisins are plump and soft.

2. Add greens, stirring until softened, at least five minutes, or as much as 10. If they dry out, add a bit of water a spoonful at a time. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Greens with pine nuts and raisins. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I'm not saying that these two dishes should be served together, but either one would make a fine addition to a New Year's feast. Just be sure to add the cornbread, a dish so perfect that there's no point messing with it.

Cornbread. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I submitted this story for a Twitter party called Let's Lunch. Here are a few other stories on the theme Holiday Sides by some awesome writers. Be sure to check them out! (and if you'd like to be a part of Let's Lunch, go to Twitter and post a message with the hashtag #LetsLunch!

Cheryl Tan's Auntie Jane's Potato Gratin at Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
Charissa‘s Coconut Date Balls at Zest Bakery
Eleanor‘s Easy Festive Stir-Fry at Wok Star
Ellise‘s Lime-Chipotle Carrots at Cowgirl Chef
Felicia‘s Chinese Butterfly Cookies at Burnt-Out Baker
Grace‘s Fruitcake at HapaMama
Joe‘s Maine Homestead Holiday Dishes at Joe Yonan
Linda‘s Baked Salad at Free Range Cookies
Linda‘s Trinidadian Baked Pastelles at Spicebox Travels
Lisa‘s Potato Latkes at Monday Morning Cooking Club
Lucy‘s “Not My Mama’s” Black-Eyed Peas & Greens at A Cook And Her Books
Maria‘s Grandma Dorothy’s Deviled Eggs at Maria’s Good Things
Patrick‘s Baby Pecan Pies at Patrick G. Lee
Rebecca‘s Grandmother Martha’s Potato Kugel at Grongar Blog
Steff‘s Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Crumble at The Kitchen Trials
Victor‘s Roasted Parsnips, Carrots & Delicata Squash Tossed With Sauteed Mustard Greens at The Taste of Oregon

Text and images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.

Beets don't fail me now

Ruby red beets are the jewels of the earth, with a sweetish mineral taste reminiscent of soil and for any kid whose ever busted his lip, blood. I love beets, but I can’t help thinking of the word geophagy when I eat them. Geophagy is the consumption of soil in order to satisfy a nutritional need, such as sulfur or phosphorus; it's quite literally eating dirt. Geophagy is a form of pica, the craving of non-food items. In my mind, eating beets is a socially acceptable form of geophagy - it’s as if the beets soak up all that mineral goodness from the dirt and concentrate it in the roots, giving beets an unmistakably earthy taste.

Besides the earthiness, beets are satisfyingly nutritious and I'm probably in the minority saying that the red juice is one of my favorite aspects of the vegetable. I like the purplish red splotches on my hands after handling beets, the deeper stains in my cuticles.  (I also like the smell of garlic on my hands and can’t imagine why anyone would want to wash it away - that sharp pungent smell wakes up my senses, like lavender or rosemary and reminds me that I've been cooking.)

I’m pretty sure I didn’t knowingly eat a beet until my adult years, and now the vegetable make regular appearances on my dinner table. Sometimes roasted, when the fresh ones are available in the fall, excellent paired with a creamy horseradish sauce; but usually in the pickled form, because my youngest daughter adores pickled beets, and will boldly pick them off her fellow diners' salad plates.

Pickled beets are delicious in many salads, especially a Greek salad - a bed of lettuce, a handful of pepper rings, some olives and feta and slices of pickled beets accompanied by an oregano-accented vinaigrette. I make an amazing Greek salad for company that features pickled beets. The inpsiration is a Tarpon Springs Greek salad with patatosalata, a potato salad that begins with potatoes soaked in red wine vinegar. I garnish this salad with shrimp and homemade pickled beets - pushing the potato salad and shrimp to the corners and piling the vinegary sanguine beets in the center.

Tarpon Springs is on the Florida Gulf Coast, famous for Greek bakeries and sponge diving and this style of Greek salad. On vacation in Florida, if I find a Greek diner, I’ll order this salad, and it’s almost always good, but there’s never enough pickled beets, and horrors, sometimes the beets are not even pickled. My favorite version is from Athenian Gardens in St. Petersburg, Florida. The potato salad is just right. It’s a subtle thing - at first you think it’s bland, but then you can’t get enough of it. This salad has everything - salty feta and olives,  sweet shrimp, vinegary pickled beets, crunchy sharp peppers.

 

Pickled Beets

This recipe is adapted from "American Home Cooking" by Cheryl Alters Jamison & Bill Jamison (Broadway, 1999). I used canned beets because my market was out of fresh and I figured a beet trek would expand my carbon footprint unnecessarily. The canned beets were delicious, and I’m sure the fresh beets would be, too.
2 (15 oz.) cans whole beets, drained and sliced ¼ inch thick  or 1 pound fresh beets, trimmed, sliced ¼ inch thick and steamed for 20 minutes or until tender

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons prepared horseradish

½ cup red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a glass or plastic bowl, combine beets, sugar, horseradish and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Store in refrigerator.

Greek Potato Salad (Patatosalata)

6 medium red potatoes

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

4  green onions, finely chopped

1/2 cup mayonnaise

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Cook unpeeled potatoes in unsalted water until tender, about 20 minutes; let cool just enough so that you can handle them. Using a towel to protect your hand, peel potatoes and cut into 1-inch pieces. Place in bowl and sprinkle with vinegar and salt, add chopped green onions and toss. Stir in green onions and mayonnaise. Season to taste and mix well. Store in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Vinaigrette

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1. Whisk all ingredients together. Store in refrigerator.

Greek Salad with Pickled Beets, Shrimp and Patatosalata

Serves 4

At the height of summer, fresh diced tomato and cucumber would be excellent in this. Don't bother with out of season tomatoes.
 1 head Romaine lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces

1 small red pepper, cut into thin rings

½  cup Kalamata olives

1 pound shrimp, boiled for 2 minutes in water with lemon.

2 ounces feta cheese, cut into ¼ inch thick slabs

Pickled beets

Patatosalata (Greek potato salad)

1. On a large platter, spread out lettuce. In sections, place ingredients - pepper rings, olives, shrimp, patatosalata, feta and pickled beets. Serve salad with dressing alongside.

Text and images © 2010, Lucy Mercer.

CSA: Celebrating Seasonal Abundance

Beauty Shots

Above: Farmers Fresh CSA New Member Pack &

Below: This Week's Produce

It may be raining outside, but it's a beautiful day inside my house because I picked up my first Farmers Fresh CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shipment of the year. I waited a bit late to join in this year -- the program started in March, but I'm so glad I signed up. The box is filled, literally filled with lettuces, beets still clinging to bits of soil, and snow peas, snow peas! vibrant green and just-picked crisp, crying out to be stir-fried!

The new member pack was a nice surprise, a Farmers Fresh tote filled with grains, honey, coffee and the makings for herbal tea. This is a picture of the member's package, along with my girls' opening the presents: goat's milk soap samples and lip balms.

And this is what I plan to cook with the CSA bounty:

1. Strawberries. The favored Mercer method of strawberry consumption is to clean the berries, hull and halve them and serve them with a bowl of demerara sugar. I used to mail order demerara, but now you can buy organic demerara at Kroger or Wal-Mart, just look near the granulated sugar. It has the molasses taste of brown sugar, but it's less refined and less moist, so you get non-melty crunch with each luscious bite. If I get ambitious, and if the berries last long enough, I'm tempted to make a simple pavlova, with a slow-baked meringue base and simple sugared berries serve on top.

2. Snow peas. I could go all Martha and make that ridiculously time-consuming, but very tasty, stuffed snow pea appetizer. I think that will have to wait. I think shrimp and snow peas will make an excellent stir-fry for supper. Maybe some fried rice on the side, which will incorporate the beautiful green onion.

3. The beautiful green onion can be used in the fried rice/stir-fry combo mentioned above or perhaps in a comforting potato soup. BTW, I've been waiting all year for the CSA potatoes. I have a collection of leek greens in my freezer, so the onion greens will surely go into my next batch of vegetable stock.

4. This week's herb bundle includes cilantro, admittedly, not a favorite, although I'm not one of those cilantro haters who detect a soapy taste in the green herb. This month's Fine Cooking has a recipe for Kohlrabi and Radish Slaw with Cumin and Cilantro that deserves a try.

5. Loose Leaf and Hydroponic Lettuces. Initial game plan is to use them in salads, but I'll keep in mind a Jacques Pepin recipe that uses a vinaigrette-dressed salad as a base for a simple pan-fried piece of fish.

6. Beets. I love beets, especially pickled beets on a Greek Salad (see last summer's post). A few months back I made roasted vegetables with dill from a Gourmet Cookbook recipe. I think that may merit a second try. Served with a nice piece of steak, or perhaps a roasted chicken breast.