Black-Eyed Pea

Add corn bread, a crunchy chicory salad, and peach pie for summer supper at its best.

No one seems completely sure where the name Hoppin' John comes from. Variations run from the clearly apocryphal suggestion that this was the name of a waiter at a local restaurant who walked with a limp, to the plausible, a corruption of pois pigeon (pigeon peas in French). Culinary historian Karen Hess in her masterwork, The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection, offers a twenty-plus page dissertation on everything from the history of the dish to recipe variations to a number of suggestions for the origin of its name, ranging from Malagasy to ancient Arabic. The only thing that all seem to agree on about Hoppin' John is that the dish is emblematic of South Carolina and is composed of rice and black-eyed peas. Many years back I was amazed to discover a startlingly similar dish on the luncheon table at the Dakar home of Senegalese friends. There, the dish was prepared with beef and not smoked pork, but the rice and black-eyed peas were the same. The name of that dish was given as thiébou niébé. There seem to be two variations on Hoppin' John: One calls for the rice to be cooked with the peas. The second calls for the peas and rice to be cooked separately and then mixed together at a final stage prior to serving. I prefer to cook my rice and peas together.

This creamy Senegalese rice and lamb dish combines peanuts, okra, and black-eyed peas to build beautiful West African flavors in a comforting one-pot meal.

A bowlful of this Southern classic black-eyed peas dish on New Year’s Day is meant to bring you good luck all year round.

Chef Preeti Mistry’s dahi puri, filled with black chickpeas and potato hunks and drizzled with spiced yogurt and chutneys, are perfect party snacks.

This satisfying vegetarian stew is recipe developer Rachel Gurjar’s riff on North Indian-style lobia masala. Black-eyed peas soak up the flavors of an onion- and tomato-based gravy along with kale or any greens you’d like.

If you don’t want or didn’t have time to soak the black-eyed peas overnight, just power-soak them.

Prep like a pro: Chef Mike Lata of The Ordinary in Charleston, South Carolina, makes the vierge (a Southern take on the traditional French accompaniment to seafood) in the morning, so that when dinner rolls around, all that’s left to do is sear the fish.