A Recipe for Happiness

Any of you who have been reading here for more than a year will know that I make the same thing for our New Year's Day dinner every year: pork for health, greens for wealth, and black-eyed peas for happiness. My New-Orleans-raised mother always made this, and now I do.

Every year, for my entire adult life. 

That means that I've been talking about this here for fifteen years now, and yet, I have never given you a recipe.

So now I will.

New Year's Day Black-Eyed Peas 

Ingredients

1 pound of dry black-eyed peas

1 ham bone

4 tablespoons canola oil, lard, or bacon grease

4 tablespoons flour

1 large or two small onions, diced

1 bell pepper, diced (I always use red, because I don't like green, but green is traditional)

2 stalks celery, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 small can plain tomato sauce, or half a can tomato paste

1 bay leaf

Method

1) Pick through and rinse off the black-eyed peas. I always pick through them and rarely find anything, but this last time I found a pea-sized rock, which is why I always do it.

2) Soak your black-eyed peas in a big pot. You can soak overnight, but I never think ahead that far. I just cover them with water, bring them to a boil, and then turn off the heat and leave them to sit for an hour or two.

3) Drain the water off, and put fresh water in the pot to cover the black-eyed peas and the ham bone. I always have a ham bone from Christmas, and this is a good use for it. If you don't have the bone, you can just use ham, but don't put that in yet.

4) Simmer the black-eyed peas until soft, about an hour or so. The ham bone won't be soft enough yet, but that's okay. It can stay in there.

5) Dice up all your vegetables so they're ready to add to the roux. It will look like too many vegetables. It is not.

This is what makes it taste good.

6) Make a roux with the oil, lard, or bacon fat. Heat the fat on medium heat and then sprinkle in the flour. Use a flat spoon to scrape and stir the flour around. This will take fifteen minutes or so. It will look pretty separate the whole time, but that's fine. You can be a little more negiligent to start, but once the flour starts browning, you really need to stir pretty constantly. When the flour is a medium dark brown color, it's done.

Done roux.

7) Add all the vegetables except the garlic to the roux and cook on low heat until the vegetables are soft. Then add the garlic and cook just a minute longer.

8) Dump all the vegetables into the black-eyed peas, add the bay leaf, the tomato product, and ham now if you didn't have the bone, and simmer the whole thing on low heat uncovered for a long time. Like two hours.

9) When the ham on the ham bone pulls off easily, remove the bone from the pot, let it cool a bit, and then pull all the ham off. Shred it and put it back in the pot and continue simmering.

10) Toward the end of the cooking time, you need to be scraping the bottom of the pot and stirring it frequently so it doesn't stick. This is also when you want to taste it and see if it needs more salt. I wait until now to do this because the ham adds quite a bit of salt and the whole thing reduces so much that it would be easy to over-salt it earlier in the cooking.

When the black-eyed peas have broken down quite a bit to thicken it all and there isn't much liquid left, it's done.

Done black-eyed peas. You can see it's about two inches lower than when it started cooking.

Some of my kids like these on their own, and some like them on rice. Either way, add butter and vinegar to taste at the table.

This makes a lot of black-eyed peas, but if you're going to spend four hours making anything, you'd better make enough for leftovers. Also, they freeze really well, so don't be afraid to make a lot. It just means more happiness--and delicious food--for you.

Happy New Year!