Kyra’s Chicken & Black-Eyed Pea Soup Recipe

Well, if you’re African American, southern extracted, you probably cook/eat black eyed peas for good luck on New Year’s Day. I did that. But made my own peas on Jan 2 with a recipe tweeted around by my colleague Professor Mark Anthony Neal (@newblackman).

The recipe from TVOne’s Turn Up the Heat with G. Garvin mentions Patti Labelle but I was interested in the ingredients not the celeb associations of Black Eyed Pea Soup

I improvised the original recipe below and made it my own and am sharing it here with you! I didn’t have nor could even I find “Heavy Cream” (they don’t sell it in the hood here in Crown Hghts, Brooklyn) and I forgot to buy chicken stock and sausage. What I had on hand tucked away in my cabinets were coconut milk, a miso soup packet, and in the fridge, uncooked chicken strips. I nixed the shallots (they don’t sell shallots in my walking sphere of Brooklyn) and though I bought more hot sauce, I didn’t need anything other than the red chilies (which I cut up to release into the soup). 

Also I didn’t measure nuthin’. Just got the ingredients and went to town. I know I didn’t do all these measurements. I was cooking for one. 

Ingredients

½  cup white onions
¼  cup shallots  

2 carrot sticks and 1 potato
4  garlic cloves (used more like 2 big ones)

½ cup celery stalks chopped
½ ounce olive oil
1  tablespoon red chilies (chop up to release into the soup as it cooks & wash your hands after!)
½ pound unsalted butter (used 1/4 pound; to be honest I know that’s why it taste to rich but cld do less)
1  pound andouille sausage (replaced with chicken actually strips of chicken breasts)
3  tablespoon Red Rooster hot sauce 
4  cups chicken stock or 2 gallons of water (used Edward & Sons natural/instant Miso-Cup Savory Soup with Seaweed and added 3 cups of water)
1½ cups heavy cream (substituted 13.5 oz can of Goya coconut milk) 
1  pound pre- soaked black-eyed peas (did less than a cup just for me to eat with seconds, could have added more)
1  bunch of cilantro (I forgot to add this! Will do for seconds tomorrow. Add this after it’s done)
Salt to taste (if it’s too salty, add potatoes to absorb oversalted, slice thin)
Pepper to taste (shouldn’t need with the red chili pepper)

Procedure

  1. Dice the celery, carrot, potatoes, and onions into small cubes.
  2. Crush the garlic and cut the chicken strips into cubes
  3. Next, drain water off of pre-soaked black-eyed peas. 
  4. Using a large pot, heat the oil over medium heat. 
  5. Once the oil is hot throw in onions and chicken along with the crushed garlic. (add carrots after beans are tender)
  6. While this cooks for a few minutes til chicken is 90% cooked. 
  7. Continue with the soup mixture by adding the butter, salt, pepper and red chilies. 
  8. Let all ingredients cook for 3-4 minutes or until mix seems ready. 
  9. Next, add the beans to ingredients cook for a couple of minutes, 
  10. Add miso stock and cook over low heat/simmer for about 75 minutes.
  11. Add carrots and potatoes about 45 mins into low simmer.
  12. Salt to taste. 
  13. Add cilantro before serving

This was the best soup I have ever made or tasted. It’s a mix of Caribbean (coconut milk), Japanese (miso soup), and African American (black eyed peas) cuisines. The unsalted butter is probably what makes it so creamy and delish on top of the coconut milk. It’s healthy and tasty. Adjust to your needs for vegan or vegatarian.

posted : Sunday, January 2nd, 2011

tags : cooking food new_year_s_day ritual tradition black_eyed_peas soup recipe

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This is from my NYU hip-hop class. Anthony Buonpane was a brilliant member of the class. This was his first assignment. Each student had to do an autoethnography sharing how they first learned about black music (and preferably not from recordings). What was their first experience watching, hearing and participating with real African Americans not just mediated images or sounds. Mining my teaching past for a TEDx Talk I am giving in Beijing in August for the WiserU summer program. One of my colleagues called what I do as a hip-hop professor NEW JACK PEDAGOGY. I loved that. 

posted : Monday, June 28th, 2010

tags : tedx beatbox hip_hop new_jack pedagogy nyu

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Brother-man (I’d Like to Change the World)
Music by Tomás Doncker and Kyra Gaunt with Alvin Lee
Words by Kyra Gaunt
Hook borrowed from Ten Years After (w/ Alvin Lee) “I’d Love to Change the World (1971)

Excerpt from rehearsal 10/19/2009 on Rockaway Avenue, Crown Hghts, Brooklyn

Always watchin’ them in silence
And my teeth are filled with rage.
Doing nothing is such violence, hmm?

Everyday I don’t deliver.
Went to college but I’m dumb,
to the saggin’ pants I let down.

Been demanding they be different.
Thrown my hands up in the air.
Perpetratin’ I’m a victim, hmm?

And the need for something better
is so blatantly erased,
Being liberal is such nonsense.

Pre-chorus (4 bars):
I’d like to change the world—-

V2:
Always watchin’ them in silence
Still my teeth are filled with rage.
Doing nothing is such violence, hmm.

Everyday I don’t deliver.
Went to college but I’m dumb,
to the saggin’ pants I let down.

Been demanding they be different.
Thrown my hands up in the air.
They can have their self expression, uh-hmm.

And the need for something better
is so blatantly erased,
Being liberal is such nonsense.

Extension - V3 (half chorus):
There’s- no- chance to be a child.
Fuck the village, ain’t no jobs.
Just- a myth from Riker’s Island.

I could stop and make a difference.
Get to know my Brother-man and his commitment.

Full chorus w/ Tomás (16 bars):
I’d like to change the world.
But I don’t know what to do. 2x

Stevie Wonder Release (16 bars/guitar):
I keep on passin’ them by (4x)

Bridge + break (3 + 3 / 3 + 3):
Ah-ahhh. (4x)

Chorus (solo):
I’d like to change the world.
But I don’t know what to do - - . 2x

Full chorus (add harmony + sing-a-long) 2x

Stevie Release (8 bars/guitar):
I keep on passin’ them by (2x)…out

posted : Friday, October 30th, 2009

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Are My Hands Clean? Sweet Honey in The Rock

SOUND FILE: http://www.rhapsody.com/sweet-honey-in-the-rock/live-at-carnegie-hall/are-my-hands-clean

Are My Hands Clean? 

Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Songtalk Publishing Co. 1985 Performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock from the album Live at Carnegie Hall(1988)
I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world 35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America 
 
In the cotton fields of El Salvador 
 
In a province soaked in blood, 
 
Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun 
 
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.
 

Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill 
 
A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal 
 
Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time In South Carolina At the Burlington mills 
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of Dupont 
Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela Where oil riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day 
Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world, Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas To the factories of Dupont On the way to the Burlington mills In South Carolina 

To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador In South Carolina 
Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric for Sears 
Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free— Far from the former Port-au-Prince palace

Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications For three dollars a day My sisters make my blouse It leaves the third world for the last time Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me This third world sister 

And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse On sale for 20% discount 
Are my hands clean?

posted : Thursday, October 29th, 2009

tags : sweet_honey_in_the_rock global_economy exploitation

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For teaching in my Anthro class tomorrow.

Ode to the International Debt
Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon. Songtalk Publishing Co. 1985 
Performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock from the album Live at Carnegie Hall (1988)

There is money going overseas to buy changes that will never come
Dollar backed Contras spill the blood of the people in small nations we won’t leave alone
There are Contras in Nicaragua, US trained death squads in El Salavador
I hear Jonah Savimbe holding hands with Apartheid is being lead to drink at the trough
USA sponsored violence create refugees all over the world
They poor into LA, DC and Arizona seeking sanctuary from our guns

Meanwhile, in the corporate boardrooms, they talk about the debt as if it could be paid
But money borrowed and loaned for guns you can’t eat and buildings you can’t live in and trinkets you can’t wear, it is a debt not owed by the people.

There is money going overseas to buy changes that will never come
Dollar backed Contras spill the blood of the people in small nations we won’t leave alone

posted : Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

tags :

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“ You bring the bomb which John Coltrane ws trying to put into black music beyond European diatonic conventions, models & all that. You didn’t adjust it, but you show the world that your origins are still beautiful, still acceptable, & still useful for your music. You bring followers of Coltrane, free jazz people, & the bebop police, together [in ur singing].

From Interview/Rehearsal 13 Jul 2009 with Abdoulaye Alhassane Touré at his apartment in Harlem USA above St. Nick’s Pub.

We are performing new arrangements of my music setting them to traditional African textures. Gig is 20 Jul 2009 at Cornelia Street Café NYC.

posted : Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

tags : abdoulaye_alhassane_toure kyra_gaunt african_music black_music coltrane bebop free_jazz

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Abdoulaye and I met and talked 7/6/2009 about at African night at St Nick’s in Harlem. About his Songhay roots. When we met at St Nick’s Pub in 2004 he went only by Adboulaye Alhassane. But his uncle is Ali Farka Toure (see video). The surname Toure is not on his passport. He just started using it again in U.S. We talked abt Bambara music in Gao, Mali and Niamey, Niger. Abt his father’s disapproval of his becoming a popular musician. Their lineage is traced back thru Morocco to Muhammad. In Niger, Abdoulaye said, state radio played Afro-American music especially James Brown. He watched every African American film shown when he was 10. Jim Kelley was his favorite. Africans marveled at African Americans in film & radio. He said “because they came from us!” (Africans).
And we talked about Coumba Sidibé. About Senegalese music being diatonic not pentatonic. This didn’t work for Coumba’s Wasulu singing in Bambara. How he wanted me to school her in jazz. We also talked abt my idea of “false cognates” or “false friends” when Jamaican wining meets the pelvic cadences in African dance-drum. And finally we talked about bringing our peoples together; completing the pain and suffering from our segregation.

Abdoulaye and I met and talked 7/6/2009 about at African night at St Nick’s in Harlem. About his Songhay roots. When we met at St Nick’s Pub in 2004 he went only by Adboulaye Alhassane. But his uncle is Ali Farka Toure (see video). The surname Toure is not on his passport. He just started using it again in U.S. We talked abt Bambara music in Gao, Mali and Niamey, Niger. Abt his father’s disapproval of his becoming a popular musician. Their lineage is traced back thru Morocco to Muhammad. In Niger, Abdoulaye said, state radio played Afro-American music especially James Brown. He watched every African American film shown when he was 10. Jim Kelley was his favorite. Africans marveled at African Americans in film & radio. He said “because they came from us!” (Africans).

And we talked about Coumba Sidibé. About Senegalese music being diatonic not pentatonic. This didn’t work for Coumba’s Wasulu singing in Bambara. How he wanted me to school her in jazz. We also talked abt my idea of “false cognates” or “false friends” when Jamaican wining meets the pelvic cadences in African dance-drum. And finally we talked about bringing our peoples together; completing the pain and suffering from our segregation.

posted : Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

tags : african_night coumba_sidibe harlem mali niger st_nick_s_pub abdoulaye_alhassane_toure ali_farka_toure

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posted : Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

tags :

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Twitter Censored #ThatsAfrican Trending Topic

Good journalism requires opening up topics not ending them. I followed the #Thatsafriccan Trending Topic for over 2 hours Sun 21 Jun 2009. 15 hours ago David Weiner wrote: RT@daweiner “my hastily put together piece” titled “When Twitter Went Racist?” on #thatsafrican: http://bit.ly/EYUDM…{click header for more] Sample #thatsafrican Twitter posts Read my response to the Huffington Post piece here.  [The] trending topic was censored from the Topics list at 9:35pm due to racist complaints.

posted : Monday, June 22nd, 2009

tags : david_weiner huffington_post twitter trending_topics thatsafrican censorship social_media

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