Southern Comfort

I’m not a true Southerner. Although I’ve lived in a few different places, I primarily consider myself a Pacific-North-Westerner. However, since having lived in the south, I have picked up a few traits. Words like “y’all” and “fixin’” have been slipping into my vocabulary more and more. I’ve caught myself with a definite drawl, especially in the company of other Southerners. Plus, many of the foods have snuck into my repertoire.

One such dish, I got from a good friend at work. A new vegetarian, I immediately picked up on the beans and rice. “what is that?” I asked. “Some black-eyed peas, cornbread, and rice.” “Ah,” I responded, “how did you cook it?” She explained, “well, it’s got some onion, garlic, and ham hocks.”

Ham hocks, darn. Maybe not.

The next day, in my geometry class, I was relaying a story from one student to another. It was about my black beans and rice from the prior day. Another student insisted that I MUST try black eyed peas. They were so much better. She also insisted that I didn’t have to cook it with ham. So, I thought about it some more. Perhaps I could go ahead and cook it without the ham? I would need some other flavor to accent the beans. What would be a good substitute?

Bullion. Yes, vegetable bullion.

So, I went to work at home. A la Paula Deen, I started with a stick of butter. I chopped up an onion and minced a couple of cloves of garlic, and added them to the melted warm butter in a dutch oven. When translucent, I added 1-2 tablespoon of better than bullion and cooked it up for a minute or two. Just long enough to incorporate and get bubbly.

Then I added my SOAKED and sorted beans to the pot (instructions should be on the package), a one pound bag. Stirred it around with the hot butter, and then added water. You probably want to start with a water level that is half to three quarters above the bean line. There’s no exact amount, as depending on your climate, that can affect evaporation rates. Through the cooking process, you want to check the beans for doneness and flavor by tasting! They are done when the water is well cooked down, leaving behind a sort of starchy-broth resembling a very thin gravy. Oh, and the beans should be soft too. If the water has cooked down before the beans are done, add more water. The beans won’t keep their pretty shape very well, but you want some of them to break open to get the starch in the liquid.

Go ahead and cook some rice, and corn bread. Assemble by layering: cornbread, rice, and beans. The sweetness of the cornbread balances the salty of the beans.

Now, I repeated this dish last night. I decided that the taste would be fine with olive oil rather than butter (it was), so I started with a quarter cup. I also bought the bigger bag of beans (and thus added more onions, garlic, bullion, and water) and made a couple of bowls to freeze. I’ll let you know another day how they freeze up, but I would imagine they would do as well as the black beans I make.

I also want to plug the cornbread recipe. You want a sweet, cakey, dish to balance the beans. I almost always want butter on my cornbread, but this dish was phenomenal and needed none. My family recipe uses Bisquick, and turns out great, but I was glad to find a good recipe that uses basic ingredients. The only downside is the buttermilk, which is not something I usually have on hand .

So, I hope you enjoy one of my favorite Southern comfort foods. My mom laughed when I shared this idea with her, as she swore that she tried to get me to eat black eyed peas in my early days – to no avail. Now I act like I invented it. My Grandmother was from Alabama, so I suppose I have a little bit of the south in my blood. I reckon that when the day comes that my family and I return to the Pacific Northwest, I will be sipping my lattes with a hunk of cornbread and some honey butter.