Southern Comfort

I'm more or less a stranger to Southern cooking - most Southern dishes weren't served in my house when I was growing up and only recently have I gotten interested in trying some. You may have noticed, and even remarked upon, the number of grits posts I've written recently. Here's a new twist, Blackeyed peas.

Aren't they pretty? I thought I'd show them to you before they got cooked, as they changed to rather boring browneyed peas once I cooked them. Not pretty at all. But, really, quite delicious.

The package directions said to soak them for a long time before cooking but one of the character flaws my teachers always remarked upon was my lack of patience. "Pamela needs to learn to be more careful." "Pamela is impatient sometimes." You get the drift.

So, I just sautéed some chopped onion and sliced garlic in olive oil in the bottom of a big pot, added the rinsed peas to the pot, covered the veggies with a mixture of half water and half vegetable broth, and set them to boil. I had purchased a smoked ham shank the day before and asked the butcher to cut it into three pieces. When the beans reached a boil, I lowered the heat and added shank to the pot. All this simmered together for a couple of hours, the beans softening and losing their stark black "eyes," the ham slowly breaking apart to spread its smoky richness all through the pot.

Served over brown Massa rice, it was truly comfort food, solid, sustaining and deep-down warming. We did find it ever so slightly bland, even with black pepper added at the table, until My Beloved hit on the idea of adding a little of Chilebrown's fiery hot sauce, dot by dot, and that made all the difference. The slight hint of heat and the richness of flavor turned Southern comfort into something lively and unexpected.

Has-Beans

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a single pound of beans can just about wipe out world hunger - and when there are only two in the household, they last a long, long time.

We loved the hearty beans but I have to admit that I may have cooked a teensy bit too much. By the time we were nearing the bottom of the pot, we were more or less beaned out for the foreseeable future.

Another oops I made was to purchase a local smoked Cornish game hen, supposedly ready to eat. It was so hideously salty and almost slimy in texture as to be inedible and, believe me, not many foods fall into that category around here; we are the kind of people who stretch the Five Second Rule, despite the state of our kitchen floor.

I bundled the hen into a baggie and fridged it although, frankly, it was so salty I doubt if it could have spoiled, hoping to be inspired with some way to use it in subsequent meals.

The inspiration came a day later when I thought of dilution as the solution to all that sodium pollution. I decided to try making soup stock from it and leaving out all salt from the broth. I covered the hen with water, threw in an onion and some celery and simmered it until the meat was firm (and no longer glutenicky {new word}), boned it and returned the bones to the broth for a longer simmer with the veggies. When strained, the stock was richly yellow, full of flavor and only lightly salty. Returning the meat to the broth along with some diced carrot, onion and green beans, I remembered the last two cups of beans that had been simmered with the ham shank, so I threw them in as well to simmer with the veggies and smoky chopped hen.

The resulting soup is rich with flavor layers, one of the loveliest soups I have made, enough for lunch today and some nice leftovers for the freezer. We made piggy slurping noises, enjoying the last of those has-beans.

I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends

Sometimes, things just happen at exactly the right time. Serendipity. First, my butcher explained that ham shank would be better than ham hock with my beans - she said her Irish family always used the shank and who am I to argue with a fellow Irishwoman? Especially when she is wielding a large knife.

Then, while I was simmering a big pot of Rancho Gordo cranberry beans with said ham shank, water, tomato sauce and some chopped, softened onions, I happened to read Peter's post about the penitential meal he was making for his little family, having pigged out on Za-zagna (I love Milo's name for it!) the day before.

As always, Peter was tossing in a dash of this and a dollop of that (he likes layered flavors) to his beans so I decided to follow suit with mine. Having no idea what shichimi is and being too lazy to look it up, I only added balsamic vinegar and a little maple syrup to mine. I left out his soy sauce suggestion as my ham shank was already adding plenty of salt.

More simmering and tasting as they got softer and softer, and finally they were ready. The ham had fallen completely off the bones in chunks and the marrow had dissolved into the sauce. The color was a rich browny-red and the flavors wafting up were literally mouth-watering. While perhaps not as complex as Peter's beans, they were deeply satisfying and homey with a little kick in the pants from the vinegar to keep them from being boring.

I'll be back to thank the butcher this week and herewith go my thanks to Peter - I got high on these beans - with a little help from my friends.