Black-eyed Pea Masala

I love Indian food. Asafetida seems to be the magical ingredient that pushes a dish from close to spot on. If you like to cook Indian, do yourself a favor and secure some. One jar will last you forever.

This recipe is one I saved in my RSS reader to try some time. I have tons and tons of stuff waiting to be tried. This one worked nicely because I was also trying to clean out my freezer a bit and had a bag of frozen black-eyed peas to use. If you use those instead of the dried called for, you can skip the soaking step. You could also used canned and it might cook a little faster. Just for fun and added nutritional value, I tossed in some chopped fresh collards. I mean, they go with black-eyed peas, right? Right! It was perfect. We ate this over brown basmati.

Bourbon black-eyed peas

One of the fun things about VeganMoFo is how it inspires you to try different things. This week, I only made a minimal soy milk and cereal run so dinners had to come from ingredients on hand. Of course, I could probably live for 6 months on my hoarded ingredients, but still. One meal’s inspiration came from Jessy’s bourbon baked beans post. I had sweet potatoes and collards on hand. And a bag of frozen black-eyed peas. Sure, those will work. And work they did! Kevin thought they were a tad sweet. I can see possibly cutting back the sweetness and/or adding something sharp like a bit of cider vinegar. But all in all this was a perfect fall meal.

Creole Hoppin’ Jean

Holy crap, I cooked again! Some one give me a prize, quick!

Lately I’ve been trying to clean out my freezer a bit, probably just so I can fill it up again. Possibly with larger bottles of vodka. There’s a bag of frozen black-eyed peas in there that’s been languishing for a while. So when thinking about what I could do with them, I picked up my copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen knowing it had some options.

Creole Hoppin’ Jean it is! Or was. It had a long list of spices that sounded tasty and I already had brown rice hanging about. Instead of the usual onions in hoppin’ john recipes, this one called for shallots. Changes, of course I made some. Since I used frozen black-eyed peas instead of dried, I skipped the soaking step. I didn’t soak the rice either. It seemed unnecessary since it was going to simmer for 50 minutes. And it all worked out just fine. More than fine, tasty! The rice broke up in cooking. Seems like it would do that even more if it had been soaked. Not that that was a problem at all. For greenery, I just tossed some green beans on the side. There are a few extra steps than regular hoppin’ john, but the results are worth it if you are a fan of the spicy.

Those nice people from POM Wonderful have sent me two new flavors of their juice to try, Pomegranate Nectarine and Pomegranate Kiwi. I need to crack those open soon and let you know what I think.