Blackeyed Peas for New Year's Eve

It's 1:44am on New Year's day and I am currently following this recipe from the Statesman Food section. I'm using the ham bone from the very nice, juicy ham my dear old mother brought over from Shreveport for Christmas. Right after my folks left on the 26th, I stuck the old ham bone in the freezer with blackeyed peas for New Year's Day in mind. It was a very good idea.

All evening, as the peas have been simmering, Michele's been laying on the couch, watching a Golden Girls marathon on the Lifetime channel, and periodically declaring, "darn, that smells good, shug!"

So here's the recipe I'm following from Wednesday's paper: Black-eyed peas, the New Year's Day food of choice for many Texans, star in this stew from Cissi's Wine Bar executive chef Deegan McClung.

Black-eyed Peas Stew

2 smoked ham hocks
1 qt. chicken stock
1 diced yellow onion
3 diced stalks celery
1 peeled, diced carrot
2 sliced garlic cloves
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 lb. fresh black-eyed peas
4 sprigs thyme
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste

Roast ham hocks at 325 degrees for 20 minutes or until their color darkens to a deep reddish brown. Preheat the chicken stock.

Saute all vegetables in the fat that renders from the hocks. Just before they are soft, add the cayenne pepper and saute until fragrant.

Stir in the black-eyed peas until they are covered in pork fat and they have warmed through, then add chicken stock, herbs and ham hocks. Season with salt and black pepper.

Bring up to light simmer and cook until the peas are tender. Let the peas sit overnight in the refrigerator. The next day, bring the peas back up to a simmer and remove the ham hocks. Pick all the meat from the ham hocks, then put the meat back in with the peas.

Remove from heat. Taste to check the seasoning, adjust seasoning and serve.

Tastes great with a warm baguette or on top of puff pastry.

— Deegan McClung, executive chef, Cissi's Wine Bar

Shrimp Salad

I've been doing a better job lately of just making up something to eat based on whatever's in the fridge and freezer.

A month or so ago, I took this picture of a shrimp salad I threw together one afternoon. We had a bag of raw shrimp from HEB in the freezer - I had been using small amounts of the shrimp at a time for sushi rolls. We used a simple spicy shrimp boil to cook the shrimp in. After you cook the shrimp, you need to take the whole pot off the stove and just let the shrimp sit a while in that same water you cooked it in to suck up all the spicy shrimp boil goodness. A very important step if you don't want bland flavorless shrimp sitting on top of your salad. Gotta have some heat, as far as we're concerned.

Just the day before, Michele had picked up some fresh salad greens and a red bell pepper from the Austin Farmer's Market at the Triangle. Well, by gawd, we were off to the races.

I then pulled out a leftover onion and a tomato from the crisper in the fridge, and diced those suckers up.

Before laying the shrimp on top, we tossed the salad in a simple italian dressing that Michele had mixed herself from one of those packets you buy at the store.

This was a reeeeeeal good lunch.