Happy Sunday and I hope everyone had a great holiday! The feature meal this week is black-eyed peas and rice; P was not convinced when I mentioned this as a menu item. I have to agree it does not sound very interesting. Maybe I should call it Bacony Beany Rice Bowl…too many made-up words…ok we will stick with the simple name for this simple dish. This dish has surprising flavor and is a very easy and cozy. It is also a very budget friendly meal…if you are looking to cut back after all of your holiday spending 🙂
3 slices of bacon, diced
1 onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 (16oz) can of black-eyed peas (rinsed and drained)
1 (28 oz) San Marzano crushed tomatoes (box if you can find it instead of can)
1 teaspoon salt (or more to taste)
1/2 teaspoon black pepper (or more to taste)
1 teaspoon Tabasco (optional)
3 cups cooked brown rice
Cook the bacon in large pot until crisp, remove bacon, reserve 2 tablespoons drippings in the pot and discard the rest. Saute onion, celery, and carrots for about 3 minutes over medium heat. Add garlic, salt and pepper, and cook until veggies are soft. Add tomatoes, Tabasco, and black-eyed peas, cook over low heat for about 10 minutes allowing flavors to come together. When ready, spoon rice into individual bowls, add black-eyed pea mixture, and sprinkle bacon on top. This re-heats well for lunch the next day and I combine the rice and black-eyed pea mixture together for storage.
You can use any bacon, it does not have to be thick cut. We had these gorgeous thick bacon slices slabs from Coon Rock Farm. If you are using thinner bacon, you may want to cook the slices in a skillet then add the drippings to a pot for cooking the remaining ingredients. Crumble the bacon over the dish when ready.
The Rest of the Week:
For some reason we were very pasta/rice heavy this week…carb loading for the holidays? 🙂
- Roasted Veggie Mac and Cheese: I would recommend roasting the veggies with seasoning, particularly the tomatoes (salt, pepper, oregano or basil). We also just mixed in the tomatoes and did not lay them on top, though I’m sure this would make it visually appealing.
- Rigatoni with Spicy Calabrese-Style Ragu: Subbed ground beef for the ground pork and reduced the ground beef to ½ pound. I felt like 2 pounds of meat was a bit heavy. We also made this a quicker meal by only simmering the sauce for about 45 minutes…still tasted great. I did not realize the sauce called for 3 hours…oops 🙂
- Fried Eggs over Steamed Rice: This is one of those super easy dishes and the link takes you to how to fry an egg but this is where the idea of this dish is from. It is just fried eggs over rice, served with soy sauce and sriracha. We sometimes will sauté veggies (zucchini or cabbage or anything you want) put aside, fry egg, and then put all of it over rice. Easy, easy, and a great way to use random veggies. Did you know you can sauté cucumber? you can and it tastes great..like a fresher/lighter version of zucchini.
