Bisnonna's Black Bean Soup

A few years ago, my zia gave me one of the greatest Christmas presents I can remember: a recipe box with cards filled out with various family recipes. The range of the recipes was quite wide and varied, covering 1950s classics, which she made copies of my nonna's own cards for, to modern dishes that she makes for PTA meetings. I was so excited. I still am. Every time I open the box and inspect the cards, I get a little thrill. Maybe I'm weird...

Anyway!

There's one recipe in there that I have been dying to try for a while now and last weekend, I finally got up the nerve.

It's one of Bisnonna's classic list recipes. To the end my zia had appended the following note: "Good luck ~ no directions ~ just Grandma's love and intuition <3" Luckily, it's a soup. Soup is hard to get wrong. Not impossible (there's a reason you never saw my attempt at borscht) but hard.

The list reads:
2 cups black beans
6 cups cold water
2 cups chicken broth
3 med. onions
1/4 cup butter
2 bay leaves*
1 clove garlic
2 Tablespoons parsley
1 ham hock*
fresh ground pepper
2/3 cup sherry - dry

*I ultimately ended up not using these items. I'm not big on bay leaves and I couldn't find a ham hock (I also wasn't about to buy a whole ham just to get one, though I imagine this soup would be a great use for leftover holiday hams).

Amy interprets and fills in the gaps:

1. The night before, soak sort, rinse, and soak beans. If you forget this step a quick soak will work fine.
2. In a large pot (this makes a LOT of soup ~10-15 bowls depending on bowl size) add the butter, then saute chopped onions and garlic with the parsley
3. Add water and broth, then bring to a boil.
4. Drain beans and add to soup
5. Now for the ham. If you have a ham hock, add it in now but be prepared to remove the bone later, if you're like me as were unable to find one, it is perfectly acceptable to use chopped ham steaks, which have the added benefit of being left in.
6. Finally add the sherry and pepper to taste.
7. Continue to simmer on low for another hour to let the flavors blend together.

I give this recipe, or at least whatever came out of the pot, an A+, personally. I only wish that I could interpret this well on Bisnonna's non-soup recipes.

The Luckiest Dinner of All: Pork, Sauerkraut, and...Black Eyed Peas?

I was considering holding this one until next year so because the whole point of this recipe is to make it for New Year's Day. Still, I figure by the the time New Year's 2015 rolls around, I'll just have to dredge this post up from the archives (and maybe add some better pictures).  Anyway, without further adieu:

"In the nineteenth century, sauerkraut was a cold-weather food. Sauerkraut with fresh pork was a fall dish. Sauerkraut with turkey was a Christmas dish. And sauerkraut with pork was eaten for good luck on New Year's Day, because, as the [Pennsylvania] Dutch say, "the pig roots forward." Thus rooting forward into the new year, the Dutch ate sauerkraut with salt pork in the late winter, and finally, sauerkraut with fish in early spring."

---Sauerkraut Yankees, William Woys Weaver [University of Pennsylvania Press:Philadelphia] 1983 (p. 176)

Eating Sauerkraut on New Year's Eve is a long-standing tradition in Germany. It is believed that eating Sauerkraut will bring blessings and wealth for the new year. Before the meal, those seated at the table wish each other as much goodness and money as the number of shreds of cabbage in the pot of Sauerkraut. -http://www.germanfoodguide.com/holiday-silvester.cfm 

Growing up the traditional meal in my family (and in my region in general) was pork and sauerkraut. Though I do have German (Alsatian, really, but let's not split hairs yet) and Polish background, this little number is from -all- over in my family. From looking around the internet, it somehow has become a "Midwest" thing, which I find interesting. (Hopefully, I won't ever find myself explaining to people that it didn't start in the Midwest like I have to do annually with pączki.)

I've been making pork and sauerkraut every year on New Year's for as long as I can remember. I'm personally a little superstitious about it. One year, I ate a whole plate of sauerkraut at midnight because the year before had been particularly bad. So it goes without saying that this year I was going to make pork and sauerkraut. I could do it in my sleep too: Salt the pork roast and pop it in the slow cooker with a recipe of sauerkraut (I have yet to make my own, but one day I dream to), a cup of brown sugar, and about an inch of chicken broth.

Usually, the side dishes to this meal are corn and mashed potatoes, two foods I hold dear; however, I didn't make them this year. My boyfriend being a southerner (ish), I went out on a limb and explored another New Year's tradition: Black Eyed Peas. I found a wide variety of reasons for these tasty legumes being lucky all over the internet, but I'm not sure if any one reason was definitive yet. I'll leave the floor open for debate.

There are many delicious Black Eyed Pea recipes. I did mine simply since it was my first go: soaked over night, boiled for 45 minutes and then toasted with hot chilies.

All in all, I think I managed to double my luck for 2014 *knock on wood*. 

Happy belated New Year to all of you!