Black Eye Peas (not the band)

This is a modification of the first recipe I posted on my blog. I made it again tonight (haven't eaten it yet), and did it a little differently. Daniel's already eaten some of it, and he says it's good. For one thing, I used a LOT less oil than last time.

You can eat this with chipatis or with rice. The first time, we had it with chipatis, and it was real real good. Tonight we're having it with rice. This reminds me; I think I'll post a recipe for chipatis next.

This recipe is from the book "greatest ever indian: easy and delicious step-by-step recipes" (parragon publishing). I like that book so much. I don't remember where I found it. It must've been cheap, though. It's full of great recipes, easy to follow and well-indexed, not to mention the fact that the cover is hot pink and the title is in all lower case. i just like that.

I'll try to post a picture soon.

Here are the original ingredients, straight from the book. I'll tell you what I did differently at the end.

black-eye peas

serves four
scant 1 cup dried black-eye peas
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
2 onions, sliced
1 tsp finely chopped fresh gingerroot
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tsp chili powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
2/3 cup water
2 fresh red chilies, cut into strips
1/2 bunch of cilantro, chopped
1 tbsp lemon juice

1. Rinse the black-eye peas under cold running water, then soak in a bowl of water overnight.
2. Place the black-eye peas in a pan of water and bring to a boil, then cook over low heat for 30 minutes. Drain the beans thoroughly and reserve.
3. Heat the oil in a separate pan. Add the onions and cook until golden brown. Add the ginger, garlic, chili powder, salt, ground coriander, and ground cumin and stir-fry the mixture for 3-5 minutes.
4. Add the water to the pan, then cover and cook until all of the water has completely evaporated.
5. Add the boiled black-eye peas, red chilies and cilantro to the beans and stir to blend together. Stir-fry the bean mixture for 3-5 minutes.
6. Transfer the black-eye peas to a serving dish and sprinkle over the lemon juice. Serve hot or cold.

So that's the recipe from the book, but here are my notes on it (I'll number my notes to correspond with the number of their corresponding steps)

1. Last time I used two cans of black-eye peas; this time I used one bag of frozen.
2. This part, I did the same, even though the bag said to boil the water and then add the frozen peas.
3. The first time I made this, I thought, "That seems like a ridiculous amount of oil!" As it turned out, it was. This time, I just squirted some oil around the pan before I added the onions. I had to add a couple more squirts after adding the spices. Alsoo, I covered the skillet so the onions didn't splatter oil everywhere. If you're not used to spicy, I wouldn't use this much red pepper and add red peppers later. I'd pick one or the other. Oh, this is important: in indian recipes, when it says "chilli powder," it means "red pepper." (Powdered chillis. Not like Bloomer's chilli powder.)
4. I didn't cover the pan for this step, because, how would the water evaporate?
5. Once again, our cilantro was nasty, so we threw it out. Again, like last time, I used dried red chili peppers, because we never have fresh ones. I just break em up and toss em in there, but we don't eat them.
6. I forgot the lemon juice last time and didn't miss it. So far, I forgot it this time, too. I'll get around to it before we eat.

We both really liked this recipe last time. When Daniel came home and saw what I was cooking, he gave me a pat on the back.

I had painful gas cramps the next day last time. I read recently in "YOU: The Owner's Manual" (an entertaining and informative book about the human body) that soaking dried beans overnight breaks down the junk that causes you to get gas. Just make sure you drain them and use fresh water before you cook them. But in my house, we like to get gas.