Field Peas

Published at

Late summer

All these peas are a gift to us from Africa, and are still widely grown there. Because they love a long, hot growing season, they’re perfect for our climate. If you live in Wisconsin, you’re not growing these peas. The Southern Seed Legacy offers dozens and dozens of southern peas.

These fresh peas should be stored in the bag you received them in and then eaten within a few days. They may keep a little longer, but the longer they sit, the more likely they are to spoil. The bag starts filling up with mold (don’t ask me how I know) and it’s disgusting. And what a waste!

You can freeze the peas (don’t tell anyone I said this) just as they come from the farm. Probably the right thing to do is to blanch them, but if I know I’m not going to have time to cook them right away (as they deserve), then I will just pop them in a freezer bag and off they go for long term storage. When ready to use, just drop them into the cooking liquid frozen and they’ll thaw and then cook quickly.

A few notes about Southern field peas:The “eye” is the hilum, the point where the pea is attached to the pod. Not all Southern peas have eyes. Lady peas are considered by many to be the most delicate, and they have no apparent eye. Pinkeye peas grow inside purple hulls, sometimes marbled, and have a slight sweetness. They go well with salty, porky and herbal backdrops – so cook them “southern-style” or cook them “Italian-style”, and you can’t go wrong.

Blackeye peas are slightly larger, and have a more floury texture than a pinkeye pea when they’re cooked. Traditionally they get that smoky-porky treatment, but they’re also delicious with coconut milk, ginger and other Asian flavorings.

Whenever a Southern pea appears in the box, thank the Swancys for doing the shelling for us. Shelling these things is tough. When asked how long it would take to shell enough Southern peas to make a meal, Chef Louis Osteen, formerly of Charleston and Pawley’s Island, is quoted as saying, “You set on the front porch and shell until the sun goes down.” How lucky we are that all we have to do is rinse and cook.

(2020) Black-Eyed Pea Salad with Hot Sauce Vinaigrette

This do-ahead recipe is adapted from “Carla Hall’s Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration.” She uses canned black-eyed peas. I’m doing it with fresh peas. Our peas may not be black-eyed peas, but they share similar qualities.

Notes from the book:

“Black-eyed peas hold a special significance in the heart of every African-American. We eat them for good luck on New Year’s in a rice dish known as hoppin’ John. That tradition comes from a long history of black-eyed peas symbolizing luck and prosperity in Africa, where they’re part of spiritual ceremonies too. They’re a part of our culinary DNA. And they’re delicious.

“Black-eyed peas are tender, skin to center, and this helps them soak up sauces. Because they’re nice and mild, I drench them with a hot sauce dressing, honeyed yet sharp with garlic and mustard. In this salad, cucumbers and onion balance the peas’ creaminess with crunch, and tomatoes burst juiciness. Down South, we call this a sitting salad. It can sit on the summer picnic table without wilting, so it’s the perfect potluck dish. Get ready for this salad to become one of your favorites.”

(2018) Brunswick Salad

David Larkworthy demoed this recipe at the Morningside Farmers Market in 2010 and I still remember it every year when okra arrives in season. It looks a little complicated because it’s a riff on Brunswick stew, a mixture of lots of flavors, but it really goes together pretty quickly and will surprise anyone who thinks okra can only be served cooked.

Recipes for Brunswick Stew are some of the most frequent requests we get at the AJC. Here’s a delicious summer variation, adapted from a recipe Chef David Larkworthy of Five Seasons Brewery as demonstrated at the Morningside Farmers Market this July. The okra in this recipe is raw, and it’s delicious. But here’s a tip: don’t expect this salad to keep. The okra is fresh and crisp when first cut, but after a day in the refrigerator, it starts to exude that sap that makes it such a great thickener, and that’s not a texture you want in your Brunswick Salad.

Duane Nutter’s Peas and Rice with Andouille Sausage

Purple-hulled pink-eye peas. I could eat them morning, noon and night. This recipe is adapted from one published in Atlanta magazine. The original calls for dried red beans, but it adapts perfectly to fresh field peas of any sort. Duane Nutter is executive chef of One Flew South at the Atlanta airport.

Field Pea or Watermelon Salsa

No, that’s not a typo. This week we’ve got a salsa recipe that works with either your watermelon or your field peas. If you’re like me and want to eat your field peas just as field peas this week, then hold onto this recipe if you get to the point you want to do something different with those pretty peas.

Saladu Ñebbe (Field Pea Salad)

The longer this salad sits, the better it tastes, so let it marinate for an hour or more before serving. It’s adapted from a recipe in Saveur magazine.

Ideas for Crowder Peas

Crowder peas! Yum. Before I give you a formal recipe, let me just say that my favorite way to fix crowder peas is so simple, and involves those green beans in today’s box as well. Trim and break up the green beans and toss them and the crowder peas in lightly salted water. Boil until Read More…

Field Pea Tamales

This is an adaptation of an African street food dish called Abala. In Senegal, the little packets are wrapped in banana leaves. At one time I had a banana tree in my yard, and could harvest my own banana leaves for wrappers. I used them to make a Burmese dish of steamed sweet rice – yum. But I digress. If you don’t have your own banana tree, there are plenty of banana leaves for sale at the DeKalb Farmers Market in both fresh and frozen form, and probably at any store that caters to a Caribbean or African customer base.

Or – make it simple – use corn husks as I suggest here. Those are pretty ubiquitous these days.

Just reading through the recipe will remind you that many cultures have leaf-wrapped dishes with a starch – like field peas or corn masa – surrounding a savory filling. And the relish here? If this were a recipe from Mexico, we’d be calling it pico de gallo.

Shrimp and Southern Pea Salad

Now on to the real stars of this week’s box – the field peas.

You can use any southern pea in this recipe, but the cooking time will vary by variety and how mature the peas were when harvested. Our fresh pink-eye peas should cook pretty quickly.

Hands on: 20 minutes
Total time: 40 minutes
Serves: 4

Field Peas with Butter, Mint and Lime

This recipe is from Matt and Ted Lee of The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen, author of several terrific Southern cookbooks. Scale down according to the amount of peas in your bag. The recipe was written for butter beans, but will work just fine with your field peas.

About this recipe, they say:

Along with muscadine grapes, butter beans are among the farmer’s market treasures of late summer—reason to wake up with gusto to another day of stultifying heat and oxford-soaking humidity. We do all kinds of things with butter beans: we make a hummus-like spread for the cocktail hour, we simmer them with seasoning meats of all sorts, and we compose marinated salads aplenty. But this may be our most simple treatment yet, and one of the most satisfying.

Butter beans come in many varieties: Some beans are green with purple speckles, some are reddish brown, a few are ivory colored, and there’s a shade of green besides. For this simple side dish, we like to use the small green ones (though you may use frozen baby lima beans if butter beans aren’t in season).

Sweet Potatoes with Collard Greens and Field Peas

With apologies to those of you who get emails from Whole Foods, this is a recipe that just arrived in my inbox today. “Sweet potatoes, collard greens …. and how about substituting those field peas for the aduki beans called for in the recipe,” I thought. And so, here it is.

notes about field peas

This week’s box left me in a quandary (which is not why I’m late). Talk about tomatoes? Corn? Melons? Blueberries? Okra? Pinkeye peas? And just what is the difference between pinkeye peas and all those similar varieties like blackeye peas and lady peas and...

Field Pea Hummus

Also at the Morningside market this summer, Robert Gerstenecker of Park 75 made this yummy hummus with pink-eye peas. Yes, those any of those field peas will make delicious hummus, and it’s just too easy. If you’ve run out of ideas for your weekly bag of crowder peas, give this a try.