Black-Eyed Peas

"PURPLE HULLS, SALT PORK — Something you might appreciate, as we did, is this little article by W.D. Bedell, which appeared in a recent issue of The Houston Post, and brought to my attention by my better half: Every summer the women's pages are loaded with recipes to perk up your hot weather taste buds. This summer is no different. You get recipes for things like chicken cooked with oranges, red velvet cake, lime juice on watermelon.

Let's not kick these fancy foods. They are fine when you must have a change. But let's not forget, either, the virtues of blackeyed or purple hull peas cooked with salt pork. The little white cream peas are good, too, but they don't have quite the full country flavor of blackeyed or purple hulls.

The best place to get peas is to grow them yourself. There are few sights as pretty as a patch of purple hulls standing up two feet high with the bright pods, big as a nickel pencil, arching gracefully in the hot sun.

But you don't have to grow them. All summer long you can buy them at the supermarket. This summer the prices have been reasonable, while some fresh fruits and vegetables have been pretty high.

Two pounds of the peas is a mess. One pound just doesn't work right. If you want a really big mess get three pounds. Some buy them already shelled, but that way they miss half the fun. That's in the shelling.

Anybody can shell peas. There's a real art in doing it right and fast. You put the peas in a dishpan on your lap. You put the sack they came in on the floor. You pick up a pod and rip down it with a zipper motion of your right thumb. If you have it down just so the peas come tumbling out into the pan.

You don't throw the hull away immediately. You hold it in your right hand, pick up another pod, and repeat the process. You keep the empty hulls in your hand until they are about as big around as a corn cob, then you throw them into the sack. If you throw them away a hull at a time you waste time and it will take you all day to finish.

A fast sheller can go through two pounds of good peas in 15 or 20 minutes. A slow one may take an hour and a half. I am still slow, but I am improving. Haven't been at it but about 35 years.

When the peas are shelled you get a big saucepan and put in a piece of salt pork about the size of a package of cigarettes. But first take a knife and slice the pork down to the rind about every half inch so it will cook all the way through. Three or four slices of smoked or sugar cured bacon will do, but you won't get the flavor you get with a chunk of white salt meat. Put water in the pan, put it on the stove and start it cooking.

Wash your peas in the dishpan. It will take you maybe 10 minutes to get them good and clean. Three or four rinsings are a good idea. Then dump them in the water and let everything cook 45 minutes to an hour. Forty-five minutes you usually get bright, lively peas. An hour you get them good and done. There are flavor advantages to both ways. Just be sure they are done, with none of the rank rawness left.

Salt to taste and eat.

There are all kinds of things that go good with blackeyed or purple hull peas.

Sliced tomatoes, cucumbers, chow-chow made with green tomatoes or chili sauce made with red, cornbread, buttermilk, iced tea, hot peppers, potato salad, Louisiana hot sauce — all of these are very good.

But the one perfect thing to go with a mess of peas is raw onion sliced in quarter-inch slices.

Any temperature, any season, any place in the world there are few tastier dishes."

-- Attributed to: W.D. Bedell, The Houston Post, 1961. In: Town Talk column, by Howard W. Rosser. Winnsboro, Texas, USA. 17 August 1961. Page 1.