Last Monday, which was also my birthday, I finished my second cookbook. It was the best present I could ever give myself. After I sent my manuscript to my editor, I then spent a week being lazy. With little rest and relaxation the past six months as I’ve raced towards my deadline, it felt good to have other people cook for me and do absolutely nothing. After a few days of this, however, I became restless and missed hanging out in my tiny kitchen. So back I went.
As I started poking around my shelves to see what I had left over after the recipe testing, I didn’t find much, though there was a bag of dried black-eyed peas. At first, I thought to myself, “I can’t do anything with these, they’re a January food.” But then I realized this was foolish thinking, as like most Texans I grew up eating black-eyed peas all year round.
When I was young, we ate black-eyed peas several times a week. Whether it was the summertime and they were freshly picked from my grandmother’s garden and needed nothing more than a dash of salt to shine, or whether it was the colder months and we took our dried black-eyed peas and slowly stewed them with aromatics and bacon—black-eyed peas were often on the table. And they were always good.
That said, for some reason when I moved to New York, I got it into my head that they should only be served on New Year’s Day, as that was the only time I could find them at the stores. Of course, they’re popular on January 1 as they’re one of those foods that’s supposed to bring you good fortune in the New Year. But their good flavor certainly shouldn’t be limited to this one day. A return to serving black-eyed peas year round was long overdue.
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