Holy crap, I cooked again! Some one give me a prize, quick!
Lately I’ve been trying to clean out my freezer a bit, probably just so I can fill it up again. Possibly with larger bottles of vodka. There’s a bag of frozen black-eyed peas in there that’s been languishing for a while. So when thinking about what I could do with them, I picked up my copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen knowing it had some options.
Creole Hoppin’ Jean it is! Or was. It had a long list of spices that sounded tasty and I already had brown rice hanging about. Instead of the usual onions in hoppin’ john recipes, this one called for shallots. Changes, of course I made some. Since I used frozen black-eyed peas instead of dried, I skipped the soaking step. I didn’t soak the rice either. It seemed unnecessary since it was going to simmer for 50 minutes. And it all worked out just fine. More than fine, tasty! The rice broke up in cooking. Seems like it would do that even more if it had been soaked. Not that that was a problem at all. For greenery, I just tossed some green beans on the side. There are a few extra steps than regular hoppin’ john, but the results are worth it if you are a fan of the spicy.
Those nice people from POM Wonderful have sent me two new flavors of their juice to try, Pomegranate Nectarine and Pomegranate Kiwi. I need to crack those open soon and let you know what I think.
