Black-eyed Pea Soup with Salsa

DEBORAH CROMBIE: In the South we consider it good luck to eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. This is our traditional New Year's recipe, adapted from one of my all-time favorite cookbooks, Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread Book by Crescent Dragonwagon.  The original recipe calls for homemade salsa (Arkansalsa) and garlic oil as garnishes, but I'm too lazy to make them so just go with our favorite fresh salsa. Don't skimp on the creme fraiche, however!

BLACK-EYED PEA SOUP WITH SALSA AND CREME FRAICHE
Makes 8-10 servings

1 pound black-eyed peas
7 to 9 cups chicken stock, divided
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon cracked coriander seeds
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup Spicy V8 juice
1 tablespoon
Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
3 cloves of minced garlic
1 to 2 large Vidalia
onions, chopped
1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
2 to 3 carrots, scrubbed and diced
1 red or yellow bell
pepper, stemmed, seeded, and diced
3 ribs celery with leaves, diced
Salt and pepper to taste

Garnishes: salsa, sour cream, cilantro

Directions:
1. In a large, heavy soup pot, cover black-eyed peas, washed and picked over, with water (add more water than you think since the peas absorb the water). Let them soak overnight.
2. Drain the beans in a colander, then return the beans to the pot. Add 6 to 8 cups chicken stock to cover beans by 2 to 3 inches. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer. Add bay leaves, oregano, ground cumin, basil and coriander. Cover the beans and let them simmer, stirring occasionally—until you can easily squash a bean against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Keep the soup over low heat.
3. Dissolve tomato paste in 1 cup chicken stock. Add to simmering black-eyes, along with V8 juice, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, Tabasco sauce and minced garlic. Give the mixture a good stir to combine.
4. In a separate skillet, sauté chopped onions in olive oil until transparent, 3–4 minutes. Add carrots, red or yellow bell pepper and celery. Continue cooking until they soften a bit, another 2 minutes. Stir these vegetables into the soup, scraping the skillet to get the flavorful bits. If you think the soup is too thick, add additional stock.
5. Now it’s time to taste. Add salt and pepper if needed. Simmer another 15 minutes or so uncovered.
6. Ladle the hot soup into bowls, and top each serving with salsa, a dab of sour cream and a sprig of cilantro, if desired. Bon appetit!

 
We leave out the bell peppers, as hubby is allergic. Also, I crack whole coriander seeds in a mortar and pestle, and I think that is the absolute key to this soup.

It's delicious on the day, but if you can plan ahead and make it the day before you intend to serve it, it's even better. I serve mine with Skillet Sizzled Cornbread, from the same cookbook. (If you can find a used copy of this book, snap it up!)

REDS and readers, what's your New Year's good luck tradition?

Cookbook Nostalgia

LUCY BURDETTE: The other day I realized how much my search for recipes for favorite or new foods has changed. These days I almost always find them online-either I run across recipes on the web that sound yummy, like those from my pals on Mystery Lovers Kitchen, or I search sites like Epicurious. Of course I often look up basic stuff in the JOY OF COOKING. And I know plenty of folks rely on TV cooking shows and celebrity recipes.

And that made me nostalgic for the old days, when my first go-to cooking bible was THE MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK. My first copy is dog-eared and stained; I remember eating tons of food like mushroom strudel (1/2 pound butter plus cream cheese plus sour cream), Vericheesy Casserole (soybeans and brown rice), and Sour Cream-Orange Cake (soaked in Grand Marnier, which I served to my dissertation committee after they'd accepted my opus--the cake, not the booze). Molly Katzen came out with sequels and the new, improved lower-fat version, but I loved the first one the best.

Do you have an old favorite cookbook that's fallen out of favor? Where do you go when you need guidance these days?

HALLIE EPHRON: Here are my two favorite cookbooks: "The Joy of Cooking" and "Michael Fields Cooking School." Both belonged to my mother. "Joy" taught me the basics. But the most recipes that I still make regularly for very special company are from Michael Fields. His curried chicken (made with an apple) and his broiled butterflied boneless leg of lamb with egg lemon sauce are sublime.

These days I go to Epicurious for recipes. It's not just the recipes but the reader comments that give you a real sense of whether the recipes work (or don't).

RHYS BOWEN: Oh my goodness, I grew up with Mrs. Beaton--you know, recipe for oxtail soup is "first take your ox."  Everything has at least half a pound of butter and is made in about ten stages. But it was what my mother used. I also had a binder of recipes my mother-in-law sent me. And these were mostly from the war--terribly economical. As I learned to cook I branched out to Julia Child (I even served souffles as a starter once. I was so ambitious in those days). But when I married John I had to learn to cook curries and Asian food as he'd spent so much time in Asia and then became sales manager of Air India.

More recently I buy cook books for the pretty pictures and for nostalgia. One day I'll go through the wad of magazine clippings in my kitchen drawer.

LUCY: I love that Rhys--first take your ox! And I have a drawer stuffed with clippings too...

JAN BROGAN - Lucy, I have the Moosewood Cookbook, too, although I have to confess I haven't used it as much as you did.  I love the Joy of Cooking, the Silver Palette, The New York Time's Sixty Minute Gourmet,  and I still use Giada de Laurentiis's Giada's Family dinners.  

But you a right Roberta, they get a lot less use these days. I love calling up five different recipes for the same thing online and patching them together for my own version.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I did a serious cookbook purge a few years ago. My husband used to work for Random House (think Clarkson Potter)and then Workman Publishing so I had tons of cookbooks - many of them beautiful but never used. I grew to love SOAR (Searchable Online Access to Recipes), but I think that morphed into something else, so I just google whatever I want and voila, it pops up. Usually it's on the Food Channel or All Recipes site
http://allrecipes.com/

Some of the books I had to keep, even if I only love one recipe from the book and by rights, should know it by heart by now. Joy of Cooking - eggnog recipe, Cooking from Quilt Country - Onion pie, the charmingly named Desperate Measures, 90 Unintimidating Recipes for the Domestically Inept - Patsy Cline's chili and gorognzola scallion cornbread

The one I still use most often, drum roll... Martha Stewart's Entertaining. I'm on my third copy, but have kept the first. Old, sticky, and has my handwritten notes "like use the dark, brown sugar."

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Lucy, I still have my Moosewood books, but I've kept them for the illustrations.  I don't think I ever actually made a single recipe from either of them!

The books I loved, and still use, are Laurel's Kitchen, Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book (second or third copies of both, as they wore out), The Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread Book by my friend and past JR guest Crescent Dragonwagon, and Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking and More Home Cooking. My mother was a big Adele Davis fan, so many of my basic cooking techniques came from that.

Current faves?  Lots of Jamie Oliver.  I adore Jamie, and have never made a recipe I didn't like.  Some Gordon Ramsay, the simple stuff.  And my very latest, Robin Ellis's Delicious Dishes for Diabetics.  I'm not diabetic, but from the previous list you can see I'm a life-long whole foods nut, and love Mediterranean-style food, so I'm really enjoying this book.  (And besides, Robin is adorable.

And, I use the online recipes, too, but am not giving up my cookbooks.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes, I have a lot of cookbooks, too. And I actually used to cook. :-)  You know what was the absolutely pivotal transcendent constantly useful and still-relevant one? The Blue Strawberry Cookbook, by James Haller. I'm telling you--it--taught me how to cook. It doesn't have reciptes. It just has--chemistry. WHY things work. That for a roux, you need an oily thing, and an oniony thing, and a thickener, and a liquid. (It could be water, or wine, or chicken broth.) That for pesto, you need a oily thing, and a cheese, and a nut, and a green thing. (But it could be basil or arugula or spinach.) Because--when you know WHY it works, you can make dinner out of anything.
Oh, life-changing.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Still have, and use, THE JOY OF COOKING. I think my mother gave that and the mid-eighties BETTY CROCKER COOKBOOK to me when I got married. I went through a big foodie period with THE SILVER PALATE COOKBOOK and THE SILVER PALATE GOOD TIMES cookbook. Then I went to law school, and the kids started arriving, and for a few years, my idea of cooking consisted of Kraft Mac n Cheese and take out pizza. Like Ro, I also purged a lot of cookbooks a few years ago: I decided even though there were some great, great recipes, it didn't make sense for me to keep my shelf loaded up with books I didn't use.

My current every night fave is DESPERATION DINNERS by Beverly Mills and Alicia Ross. The best book for cooking fast, without relying on lots of processed foods. For fancier fare, I like RECIPES FROM A VERY SMALL ISLAND by Martha Greenlaw. The recipes rely heavily on Maine foods; it has the most amazing blueberry section. Also? Gingerbread to die for.

LUCY: Oh Julia, we must have a gingerbread bake-off. The recipe in the Moosewood Enchanted Broccoli Forest is killer too--lots of fresh ginger! Now your turn: cookbooks you love? where do your recipes come from?

ENTER THE DRAGON

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've been fortunate enough to know Crescent Dragonwagon (if you're curious about the name--and who wouldn't be--you can read about it HERE) for almost twenty years. She was, once upon a time, the best of all innkeepers at a magical place called Dairy Hollow House in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which is where we met, but in the years since our paths have crossed in several strange and interesting ways.

Crescent now lives in Vermont, and I'll let her describe herself for you, as I couldn't do it better. "Your basic ultra-prolific trans-genre'd writer (novels, children's books, cookbooks/culinary memoir, poetry) who also leads workships in which participants go from I've-always-wanted-to-write-BUT into fearless action. Plus, makes one hell of a rockin' cornbread. It's dragonisma!"

And she is brilliant at all those things. I've been cooking from Crescent's Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread Book almost as long as I've known her. It's my favorite cookbook, and I've given it to everyone I know who cooks. (And some who don't, in hopes that they will.) So I think we'll start with the cookbooks, and expand from there.

DEBS: Can you tell us about the new cookbook coming out this year?

CRESCENT DRAGONWAGON: Bean by Bean will be out in mid-December. What's it about? On the one hand, cassoulet... Dahl... Chili Mole... Elsie's Cuban black bean soup... Senegalese peanut butter stew... vegetable-bean hash with poached eggs... Peter Rabbit's Salad... Three Sisters Salad with Green Beans, Fresh Corn, & Zucchini Ribbons...socca... Peanut-Butter Banana Cream Pie...

On the other hand, much more.

Deb, my deep fondness for beans has its roots in my early days as a home cook and a young, newly-on-my-own frequently impoverished freelance writer.

That there could be an ingredient which was so inexpensive yet so reliably satisfying, and so amenable to diverse incarnations --- soup, chili, salad, side-dish, even dessert --- was a great discovery for me. Not only could I eat well for not too much money, I could entertain and feed others, which as you know, is something I've always loved doing. Eventually a skinny little cookbook, my second, grew out of -it. It was Workman Publishing's first cookbook. It was called The Bean Book, had a spiral binding, and retailed for $2.45. This was 1972. I was 20 when it came out.

Fast forward 39 years (and they did fast-forward). Along the way I became, among other things, an ardent gardener (legumes are the one agricultural plant family which actually enriches, rather than depletes, the soil in which it grows), a vegetarian (protein!), an innkeeper in a part of the country which reveres beans and cornbread. I also kept growing as a cook and a traveler; Indian, Asian, African & European winds blew through my kitchen.

Bean by Bean is a cornucopia of all this: as with all my cookbooks, they're seasoned with lore, how-to, anecdotes, silliness (the sidebar 'Beans That Aren't" includes not only coffee, chocolate, and vanilla beans, but Mr. Bean and jelly-beans), memoir... and recipes. Also as always: I fall in love with the ingredient or dish I'm focused on, and just keep on discovering and reinventing. Beans are generous, as a plant and as an ingredient (I just roasted a few pounds of them from my own garden, with garlic and tomato, and froze them last night, for the winter). I hope to infuse those who read and cook from the book with this sense of generous possibility.

And it's with Workman, who did the first one so long ago.

DEBS: The soups from the Soup and Bread Book that are the staples in our house are the bean ones! Especially the Black-eyed Pea Soup. Fabulous. And the Skillet Sizzled Cornbread. Oh. My. The best ever. But before I get out my cast iron skillet, let's talk about the new children's book. I've had a peek at the illustrations, and they are gorgeous!

CRESCENT: "My little one/lay down your head/ it's time for rest/ it's time for bed... You tell me,/ 'I'm not sleepy now'./ 'Just try,' I say, You ask me how... " So begins All the Awake Animals, in which a mother tells her child, animal by animal and letter by letter, how every creature is getting sleepier... or is already asleep. "Baby bison is bedded down by the barn, beside her brother... Cat's curled up on a crimson couch cushion..." It ends with another small, rhymed exchange between mother and now-very-sleepy child. I've seen the rough sketches, by David McPhail, and they are luscious, gorgeous, perfect, warm, cozy, but with just a little mystery...

This is my first picture book in nearly a decade, so I'm thrilled. It's also my first ever with Little, Brown.

DEBS: AND can you tell at least a bit about Fearless, as I think our readers will love it. We have a lot of aspiring writers who read the blog.

CRESCENT: Basically, participants discover --- experientially, as they write over the weekend; not just abstractly --- how to use uncomfortable feelings, such as fear, anxiety, uncertainty as forces to power creation, rather than stop it.

As Jerri Farris, who's taken Fearless twice, said, "Now I laugh at my limitations on the way to work. "

DEBS: HERE is a link to a wonderful pictorial essay on Facebook that explains the genesis of Fearless Writing. (I'm not actually sure I want to share this, as I think anyone who reads it will want to sign up. Then Fearless will be booked up for the next decade, and there won't be any room for me . . .)

For more about Crescent and her work, there are two wonderful blogs:

Nothing is Wasted on the Writer: Living, loving, writing, reading, thinking. Listening, tasting, sniffing. Cozying up to mystery at midlife. I think we're all part of the narrative life tells itself.

And:

Deep Feast: writing the world through food: if you want answers to the big questions (identity, life, love, death), start by talking to your dinner. Oh, yeah: recipes, too.


I'm addicted to both. Hope you all will be, too!