Monday: Re-Roti

 

Warm black-eyed pea and golden chard salad, served with roti.

Elizabeth Schneider's Vegetables: From Amaranth to Zucchini attributes this recipe to Cyprus.  Chard leaves and stems are just simmered briefly and tossed with black-eyed peas, lemon juice, and olive oil.  We were enamored of the roti we made on Friday (why haven't we made it in so long??) so we made another short stack.  Roti is really not that hard:

ROTI

Put 1 cup whole wheat flour into a bowl, and slowly add up to 1/2 cup water, mixing until the dough adheres and you can knead it.  Knead 7-8 minutes.  Then roll into a ball, put it back in the bowl, and cover with a damp cloth.  Leave it there for 1/2 hour to 3 hours.

Put a cast iron skillet on a medium flame to let it heat up.  Meanwhile, knead the dough again and then divide it into eight balls.  Roll each one out on a floured board until it's about five inches in diameter (it should be pretty thin).  Then place each roti directly on the skillet and within about 30 seconds it should start to puff up.  If this doesn't happen, the griddle probably isn't hot enough yet.  Flip the roti and let the other side cook about 30 seconds again.  Remove and gorge.

PS: this recipe, from Madhur Jaffrey's Invitation to Indian Cooking, is technically for "chapati."  But that is apparently the same as roti.

Tuesday: Black-eyed pea and kale soup

Black-eyed pea and kale soup.

The earthiness of kale and black-eyed peas make them a natural match, and indeed they are often found together in Southern cooking. Here we pieced together a soup loosely following the recipes here and here. This was basically a dump and stir, but we did use our new dried thyme, in addition to a pinch of smoky paprika, as the seasoning.

Sunday dinner: Pilaf party palace

Green bean and black-eyed pea pilaf.

A pilaf (or pullao, depending on where you're coming from geographically) is any dish in which vegetables are cooked slowly in rice. This can be done on the stovetop over very low heat, or in a sealed pot in the oven. We improvised this dish, in which frozen green beans from our CSA were mixed with sauteed onion, canned black-eyed peas, coriander powder, fenugreek seed, garam masala, and a little cayenne. Here we used two cups rice to three cups water, about the correct ratio if you want to replicate this in any quantity.

Tuesday: Mahanandi's "hoppin' john"

"Indian hoppin' john" from Mahanandi.

We both love mustard greens and are always tempted by them at the market, but sometimes have trouble finding dishes that can handle their potency. Although we've never made the Southern recipe this is based on, we really liked Mahanandi's take on it.

This meal incorporated a tomato that had many an admirer during its time on our kitchen table. We wanted to share it with the rest of you, our faithful readers:


Most amazing tomato ever