Black-eyed peas!

By Perry Washburn

In honor of the new year, I made black-eyed peas today. This is a take-off on an Emeril recipe, with a nod to my friend Suzette, who stunned me years ago with her New Orleans red beans recipe. I also made etoufee, a staple for us on New Years. I EXPECT that to be great. But the peas were really the star of the meal today.

1 lb dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and soaked overnight
2 Tbs bacon grease (come on Kath, admit you have some in your fridge)
1/2 lb andouille roughly chopped (I used 3 links of Emeril's Kicked Up)
2 onions chopped
2 Tbs garlic chopped
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp cumin
3 Tbs parsley (I used dried)
8 cups stock
2 tsp Penzey's chicken base (Penzey's ROCKS)
1 tsp salt
4 bay leaves
2 Tbs Worchestershire sauce
1 small ham bone

Dried bean recipes always call for rinsing and picking over beans (in this case, peas). Fine. Did that. But they then want you to drain the beans/peas. For this dish, I did not do that, as I assumed the rinsing had cleaned the peas, and I hate to throw away flavor. If you have to throw the soak water away, OK. But for this dish, I soaked the beans in 2 quarts of water, which yielded 6 cups. For the stock, I used that, with 2 cups of water added.

Brown the andouille in the bacon grease. Add the onions and garlic, and sautee for a few minutes. Add in the thyme, parsley and cumin and cook for a couple of minutes more. Add in the soak water (or stock, or just water). As I was using soak water, and not stock, I added Penzey's chicken base; omit if using stock. Add the salt, the Woo-sauce, and the ham bone (doesn't everybody save, in their freezers, ham bones, rib bones and roasted chicken carcuses?).

Bring to boil. Reduce to a bare simmer, and cover. Stir frequently. Simmer for 3 hrs or so. An hour or so before dinner, take the lid off if this is still soupy. Mine was.

Remove the bone and the bay leaves. Serve over rice. This was creamy and spicy and fantastic.