STEEMIT CULINARY CHALLENGE #9 - Entry 2 : Black-eyed Peas with Wild Field MustardsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #food8 years ago

I was raised with a family tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day to ensure good luck through the next year. I've kept the tradition alive myself, as a touchstone to my family history. It reminds me of relatives long since gone. And it helps me appreciate how they passed on, across generations, a sense of optimism for the future. Onward to good luck and a great 2017!

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This year, I celebrated New Year's Day in the outdoors - participating in my local Audubon Christmas Bird Count. The specific day of the count varies every year from place to place. It was January 1 this year for our local Audubon group. For the last 8 years, I've been a team leader for one of the areas covered by the count.

My sister drives up from her town, 90 miles away, to be on my team every year. The weather is usually chilly and wet, so it's good to have a hearty lunch for our day of birding -- identifying and counting every bird we see from sunrise to sunset. Since the count was on New Year's Day this year and I was with my sister, I made Black-eyed Peas -- with weeds, of course!



Step 1. Pressure Cook the Black-eyed Peas

Like any legume, it's quicker to cook black-eyed peas in a pressure cooker. I never liked a pressure cooker until I learned - in an airline in-flight magazine, of all places! - about the difference between the common American pressure cooker and the style more commonly used in the rest of the world. So now I've got a good pressure cooker and use it a lot.

First, I check over my black-eyed peas, to make sure there's no rocks, dirt, or bad beans. Then I rinse them, and put them in the pressure cooker, covered with a couple inches of water. I was able to cook a pound of dry black-eyed peas in about 30 minutes. That's quick!

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Step 2. Forage the Wild Field Mustard

While the black-eyed peas were on the stove, I went out to forage some wild field mustard. I wanted some substantial greens, so I didn't look for the tender young plants. Instead, I went for the big, older leaves. In December, they were covered with ice for 4 days straight and exposed to winter temperatures (18-19 F or -8 C).

But wild field mustard (Brassica rapa) is one tough plant! During the worst weather, the plants look a little limp. But they spring right back, even with temperatures right at freezing. Those leaves, and even the center stems, will cook down just fine, into tender and tasty greens. They are not at all spicy or bitter - more like a super powerful tasting spinach.

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Those four big outer leaves are just what I'm looking for! They are far too coarse and tough for a salad, but perfect for cooking with black-eyed peas.




Step 3. Cook Everything

This is so easy to cook! There are only 4 ingredients: the black-eyed peas, wild field mustard, onions, and smoked Jalapeno peppers. And some water - that's it! The smoked Jalapenos are a powerful punch of smoky hotness, just right for warming up, without breaking a sweat.

The preparation is super easy. I just washed my field mustard and coarsely chopped it. And I chopped 2 onions.

I sauteed the onions with the smoked Jalapenos until the onions were translucent and starting to turn a golden brown. Then I added half of the black-eyed peas that I pressure cooked earlier. I covered it all with water and then topped that with the chopped field mustard. I put a lid on my cast iron skillet and let it all simmer until the mustard was wilted down, enough so I could stir it in. Then I let all that simmer for about 20 minutes. That's all there is to it!

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Step 4. Enjoy!

I pressure cooked the black-eyed peas and foraged the wild field mustard on December 31. In the morning, I cooked everything before dawn. I filled a Thermos vaccuum bottle for each person on our birding team. We watched birds all morning in the rain, sleet, and wet snowfall - that thankfully melted on ground contact, rather than freezing like our big ice storm in December. So it was nice to have a hot lunch during a break in the weather!

I had to warn folks to watch out for the Jalapeno peppers. You can see one in my bowl at the top. They are OK to eat if you like the heat, but a person ought to be ready for it. With a few disks of baked polenta and cranberry-cheddar cheese, this was a great lunch! Even though the day got colder as a front moved through, we kept on birding until sundown - thanks to the black-eyed peas!

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And we all think that those black-eyed peas brought us some good luck, too. We didn't see as many birds, or kinds of birds, as in past years, but we saw some good ones -- a Wilson's snipe, bald eagle, Peregrine falcon, western bluebirds, and plenty of others. I'll write a post about it soon. I hope that 2017 brings you plenty of luck too, even if you didn't eat any black-eyed peas! Happy New Year!



What Do You Think?

Does your family have any traditional New Year's Day food? Have you ever seen or eaten wild field mustard? Have you ever grown black-eyed peas in your garden?

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** Haphazard Homestead **

*** foraging, gardening, nature, simple living close to the land ***

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@haphazard-hstead on time bird watcher.
Good luck!

EDIT :

Congratulations!

This is the last entry for SCC #9 as of 12:10 am UTC +1.

off to bed ...

Thanks! It's always a rush to meet your deadline -- but I'm glad I made it this time. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

That's a great surprise to get 5th place! Thanks - and to @richman, too! Those New Year's Day black-eyed peas are good luck again! :D

This looks very comfort-food! I know two identical recipes using beans and cabbage or spinach, it's an amazing combination! I also like those black-eyed peas, but usually in a fresh salad with onion, tuna, and parsil. Good luck on the SCC!

Thanks, liliana! You know what's good to eat, for sure! :D Beans and greens of any combination are good comfort-food, I agree completely. And so inexpensive, too. Maybe I will use the rest of my black-eyed peas with your salad recipe -- it sounds really good.

Here's a recipe for this salad, I will not cook it before the temperature gets at least to 25ºC-30ºC! ;)

That really looks good, especially with the eggs, too. Thanks!

That's good to know that you can pressure cook the peas. I normally soak mine for 24 hours or longer before I cook them, but even then, sometimes they are still tougher than I think they should be. Does the pressure cooking method produce a soft pea or bean?
I pressure cook stuff all the time. It is one of my favourite cooking tools.
That's so cool that you were able to see a Peregrine and an eagle on the same day.
I saw my second wild Bald eagle on the 18th of Dec. It flew across my property and then promptly attacked a flock of Canadian geese. One goose was picked right up out of the water,...never to be seen again. It gave new meaning to the words "high definition" for me. Mother Nature's way.

I think the age of the beans has more to do with how easily they get soft versus whether they stay hard. But with enough water, a pressure cooker can make mush out of any bean, lol. It just may take 2 or 3 cycles of adding water, cooking, and then letting it all cool to test the beans.

How neat to see that Bald Eagle, although it didn't turn out well for one of the geese. Eagles will eat dead waterfowl, too. They are big scavengers and thieves of someone else's success - sometimes more than hunters - compared to many birds of prey. So it's neat that you saw some active - and successful - hunting. Nature is tough, for sure. I hope 2017 is not tough, though, and full of nature! Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you too @haphazard-hstead!
That makes sense to me about the age of the dried legumes. Age would make them drier and harder.
I am looking forward to catching Ms. Mother Nature doing her thing this year, too.
I live at the beginning of eastern Ontario, there is a small Island which is called Amherst Island which is close to Kingston. You have to take a ferry to get to the island and there are approximately 50 homes/farms located there. What's really interesting is that it's home to a very large owl population so it's also known as "Owl Island".
It's a day-trip adventure because even though I can drive there in about an hour, you are at the mercy of the ferry's crossing schedule going to and fro...
If I can get myself organized, I will go shortly and document the trip.
The last time I went was early Spring and I stayed on the island until just after dusk. The owls had started to hunt. I observed them hunting in teams. It was organized on their part and a lesson in strategic stealth. Eerie powerful wisdom.

That sounds so cool to be on Owl Island! They are such quiet birds. I've seen the bird migrations at Point Pelee National Park that extends south into Lake Erie. But I've never heard of Owl Island. I would have gone there, for sure, when I lived in Michigan. So cool. Have a great time there!

Well, if you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods, I will take you there. It's an independent island floating in Lake Ontario just south of Milhaven, about 3 hours east of Toronto. :)

Congrats on placing in the contest. Very well deserved!

Thanks, @gringalicious. I appreciate that they threw in two 5th place prizes! The SCC judges all seem pretty generous!

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