New Year's Black-eyed Peas
and Blewits
Ingredients
1 12-ounce package of dried
black-eyed peas
1/4 cup peanuts
1/4 cup walnuts
1/4 cup pecan pieces
1 cup brown rice
2 tablespoons each butter, olive oil, canola oil
2 cloves elephant garlic (or 2 generous tablespoons
minced garlic)
2 medium white onions
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Morton's Nature's Seasoning
1 teaspoon garlic powder (only if you like extra garlic)
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 double-handful sliced Lepista nuda (if you
can't find blewits, use portabellos, Macrolepiota
procera, or any "meaty" mushrooms you can get
your hands on)
3 bay leaves
1 cup "yard herbs"-- (see explanation below)
1 tablespoon grated cheddar cheese
Procedure
1. Rinse peas and start them
soaking (2 or 3 hours or as directed on package).
2. Go out and see what kind of
mushrooms you can find. You may want to pick up a package
of portabellos from the grocery store on Dec. 31 if you
don't feel lucky. On Jan. 1, 1999, I was lucky enough to
find three good-sized Lepista nuda and a couple
of nice Pluteus cervinus, hence that's what I
used in this recipe.
3. Clean and slice mushrooms into
1/2-inch strips. You need a good double-handful (about 4
or 5 cups).
4. Go out to the yard/garden and
collect some flavorful herbs and weeds. If you are making
this dish in the summer or any time other than New Year's
Day, you use whatever you think will be good. For New
Year's Day (it was very cold in north Florida), I
collected 3 hand-sized tender collard leaves, 3 sprigs of
wild dill, a sprig of chocolate mint, a sprig of
spearmint, a few leaves of pineapple sage, about a cup of
new chickweed sprouts, a couple of whacks of garlic
chives, a few wild lettuce leaves, and 3 bay leaves (good
ones are hard to find this time of year).
5. Put the bay leaves aside.
6. Wash the herbs and wrap the
bundle in the collard leaves.
7. Cut the bundle into 1/4-inch
slices and save them in a small bowl.
8. Dice the onions into 1/2-inch
pieces and mince the garlic (use a garlic press if you
want)
9. Put the butter, olive oil, and
canola oil in a medium sized pot over a medium-high heat.
10. When butter is melted, add
diced onion.
11. Sauté onions until
translucent, then add the garlic and nuts.
12. Drain the peas and add them to
the pot.
13. Add rice to the pot.
14. Add enough water to more than
cover ingredients (about 4 cups)
15. Add salt, pepper, and other dry
seasonings.
16. When mixture starts to boil,
reduce heat to medium-low and let it cook for 1/2 hour.
17. If liquid gets below
surface of the peas, add a cup of water!
18. Add the herbs
and bay leaves to the pot and stir.
19. In a separate
pan, sauté the mushrooms in a little olive oil until the
liquid evaporates and the mushrooms are just starting
to caramelize.
20. Dump the
mushrooms into the pea pot and deglaze the sauté pan
with a little water. Add that to the pot too, and simmer
until peas are soft (about another 1/2 hour).
21. Don't let all of the water boil away,
because you do NOT want to burn the peas after you've
gone to all this trouble!
Serve with a side
of greens (i.e., collards or mustard) and plain,
unflavored corn tortilla chips or cornbread. Mmmmm...mmm
--YUM!
On New Year's Day,
the black-eyed peas are for luck and the greens are for
prosperity in the coming year. The cornbread is there
because it tastes good with the peas and greens.
For beverages, you could drink last night's left-over
champagne, but I prefer iced herbal tea sweetened with
wild honey.
|