Luck

Some people say luck is just what arrives on the plate of your life. I say you can make some of it happen. And here it is, a brand new year, and I'm enlisting the help of tradition. I want a better year than the last one. There was a lot of good, to be sure--some great creative projects with some fine people--but there was also a lot of loss: a beloved college friend, one of my favorite customers, and a man who did gorgeous work for me for the past ten years. Not to mention a few friends with sudden dramatic changes to their health.

So I'm making black-eyed peas.

I was never a bean girl when I was a vegetarian, or in the years afterward. Oy. What a production. The sorting always threw me, for starters. I was always positive I was taking too many out, or a stray one I missed would turn out to be a stone and crack my tooth. And let's not even go into soaking (you have to plan!).

But I've become a bit more teachable, I suppose. A few years ago I realized I really could stir the cereal into the boiling water, rather than having to plop it in all at once because why should you have to stir it in? "Who says?" had been my mantra. (One year I also realized traffic lights take two minutes. I hardly ever stress at a light anymore.)

So I tried rinsing the beans and then spreading them out on one of my favorite plates, and what do you know? It was easy. And I had also made the acquaintance of one Harold McGee via Terry Gross' "Fresh Air," and so had learned that you could cook the beans slowly--in the oven, even--and never have to soak them. Hello, bean family!

In addition to their absolute beauty, black-eyed peas are said to bring luck at the start of the year. But this soup was actually inspired by the leafy celery Swanton had at the Farmers' Market several Saturdays ago. In the past, I'd always avoided leafy celery, but this time I thought, "That's gorgeous! I'm gonna make something with those leaves." Soon came the idea for the pesto, which I realized would give the black-eyed peas a lot of punch. Some folks think you need to get that from ham hocks, but that's pretty much just straight salt. This is a lot more interesting, if you ask me.

So here is my new favorite soup. And here's to a great new year.

Black-Eyed Pea Soup with Celery Leaf Pesto*:

For the soup:

1 cup black-eyed peas
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
Stems of 1 bunch of Swiss chard**
1 stalk celery
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 cups water
1 inch-long piece of kombu (optional)

For the pesto:

1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup celery leaves
1/2 cup Italian parsley
1-2 cloves garlic
1-2 lemons
1 Meyer lemon
Extra-virgin olive oil to taste
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put on music of choice. Toast sunflower seeds and remove from oven. Chop fine in the food processor while still warm. Lower oven temperature to 250.

Rinse black-eyed peas and remove bad guys. Place kombu in the pan, then beans, and then water. Bring to a boil. Simmer for five minutes. Then place in the oven and cook until done (beans should mash on the roof of your mouth, skins should be intact).

Chop the onion. Cut the chard stems into litle squares, and slice the celery into half-moons.

Now here comes the pesto. Add the garlic to the sunflower seeds, chop. Remove sunflower-garlic mixture from food processor and place in a bowl. Now add the celery leaves and parsley, chop, and let them go a little longer--they'll start to give up more liquid, which means less oil needed later. Juice and zest lemon and Meyer lemon, add zest and pulp of both, plus juice to taste. Now start adding** olive oil, one tablespoon at a time until it reaches the desired consistency. Pulse, taste, and make any necessary changes.

Heat the skillet, add the olive oil and chopped onion. Put a lid on the pan and cook slowly until the onions are transparent, then add the garlic and cook for another minute or two. Now add the chard and celery and cook, covered, until the vegetables are cooked to your taste (I like the chard on the softer side and the celery a little crisp). Add to cooked black-eyed peas.

*You call this pesto? Where's the cheese?

Actually, "pesto" just means sauce. This is a cross between a pesto and pistou, and of course I love cheese but I find it often takes over and masks other flavors. I'd rather have it on the side. The lemon zest provides some of the same function in binding the pesto.

**Where did the chard leaves go? Into the Lentil-Chard soup. http://cookwithlaynie.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-apricot-or-we-like-him-again.html

**Doesn't all this adding make you think we should subtract something? We did. We left out the ham. My rabbi is smiling.

©2011, 2014,2015 Laynie Tzena.