Recipes for Black-Eyed Pea Leftovers

Happy New Year!  Only three weeks left until the Chinese New Year, aka the official kick-off date for The Pearl Project!

I’m getting quite excited to see how my ideas come to fruition.  I am busy researching and planning like crazy.  There is so much information out there to sort through for some countries, but then for others you have really got to search out the information about the culinary culture.  There’s the internet, yes, but I’ve found some excellent print resources for this project as well.  Good thing I’ve got the research skills of girl sleuth Nancy Drew.  And her outfits (I wear risk-ay Halloween costumes, don’t I?).

Before I go divulging all of my upcoming recipes (because I am horrible at keeping surprises), I’d better reign it in.  I don’t want anyone to think we’re not doing our fair share of eating over at the Pearl Apartment, so I thought I’d share some recent eats.

I vastly underestimated the ability of black-eyed peas to absorb water, so when my few handfuls of beans turned into a seemingly endless supply, I knew I would have to get to work with some leftovers.

Black-Eyed Pea Hummus (Vegan)–Makes about 1 1/2 cups hummus

Toss the following ingredients into your food processor:

• 1 1/2 cups black-eyed peas
• 1 T cup water
• 1 T olive oil + extra for drizzling
• 1 T. tahini
• 3 garlic cloves (we are a heavy-on-the-garlic family)
• 1 tsp red chili pepper flakes
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp paprika + oodles more for the top
• Juice of 1/2 lemon

Plate with some pita chips or dippers of your choice.  We made whole wheat pita chips with a generous sprinkling of sea salt.

The hummus served as last night’s supper.  Today, we made some salsa and tacos.  The salsa truly hit the spot for me today.  I love simple recipes.  Honestly, to call it a recipe it a bit of a stretch.

Black-eyed Pea Salsa (Vegan)

 

Ingredients:

• 1 medium tomato, chopped
• 1 avocado, pitted,diced
• 1/2 red onion, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup black-eyed peas, cooked
• sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• juice of 1 lemon

Toss all ingredients into bowl.  Mix to ensure that lemon juice, salt, and pepper are evenly distributed.  Serve with chips.

Finally, we incorporated the salsa into our last black-eyed pea concoction for the week (hopefully for at least a few!).  We used a taco seasoning mix by Rick Bayless, whose Fresh Mex restaurant we just happened to eat at in Chicago!  Just be careful to mind the ingredients in his mixes if you’re trying to keep it vegetarian, as some mixes have anchovies in them.  We sauteed some onions, added in the remainder of our black-eyed peas and the taco mix until all ingredients were heated through.  We topped our tacos with our salsa from above and a bit of queso.

Did anyone else have any creative ideas for your black-eyed pea leftovers? 

21 days and counting until Cassie meets Hot Pot!