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
- Dice the celery, carrot, potatoes, and onions into small cubes.
- Crush the garlic and cut the chicken strips into cubes
- Next, drain water off of pre-soaked black-eyed peas.
- Using a large pot, heat the oil over medium heat.
- Once the oil is hot throw in onions and chicken along with the crushed garlic. (add carrots after beans are tender)
- While this cooks for a few minutes til chicken is 90% cooked.
- Continue with the soup mixture by adding the butter, salt, pepper and red chilies.
- Let all ingredients cook for 3-4 minutes or until mix seems ready.
- Next, add the beans to ingredients cook for a couple of minutes,
- Add miso stock and cook over low heat/simmer for about 75 minutes.
- Add carrots and potatoes about 45 mins into low simmer.
- Salt to taste.
- 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.
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?
“ 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.
The transatlantic slave trade has created an enduring image of black men and women as transported commodities, and is usually considered the most defining element in the construction of the African Diaspora, but it is centuries of additional movements that have given shape to the nation we know today.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience presents a new interpretation of African-American history, one that focuses on the self-motivated activities of peoples of African descent to remake themselves and their worlds…[O]nly the transatlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trades were coerced, the eleven other [migrations] were voluntary movements of resourceful and creative men and women, risk-takers in an exploitative and hostile environment.
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] 
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.
