happy new year, southern style

When I was a kid, my mom had this cookbook full of heritage-style recipes: sally lunn, muffuletta, hoppin' john. It must have been a gift because my mom wasn't much of a cook and she never made anything from the cookbook--much to my childhood frustration. I loved browsing through that cookbook, reading the stories behind the recipes and imagining what the food would taste like.

Lately, I've found myself slowly remembering all of those foods and finding recipes so I can try them out. Muffuletta last summer for a picnic. And this New Year's, hoppin' john.

Hoppin' John is basically rice and black-eyed peas, cooked with ham and onion. Completely simple but so, so good. It's a traditional New Year's dish in the south--so logical: leftover christmas ham=hoppin' john. I took the ham hock home from my family's Christmas dinner and luckily Gourmet's January issue had all sorts of southern recipes, including hoppin' john. Another good version of the rice and black-eyed peas combo is to get rid of the ham and add coconut milk and a little thyme--no cool name here, just rice and peas. I learned how to make that one from my friend Carmen.

The think I like most about the hoppin' john is that it represents an approach to food, cultural knowledge, that we've lost--the ability to transform one food in multiple ways, to create bridges from one meal to another.