good luck not having bad luck (if you didn't eat black-eyed peas)

I was intent on having black-eyed peas on New Year's Day and turning it into a dinner party with some of my Boston friends. According to Southern tradition, eating some on January 1st will bring a year of good luck. And upon further research, I learned that eating ham ensures "good health" (for some strange reason) and collard greens "good wealth" (green like money). All three can be combined into one dish and I found a good recipe, that I modified substantially, from my favorite cookbook, "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman (a New York Times food columnist).

But I needed a main dish. And what is more Southern and deliciously-bad-for-you than fried chicken? I mean, I generally try to eat fairly healthily. Sometimes though, there is something devilishly satisfying (and vaguely scary) about cooking with 64 oz of oil.

Unfortunately, neither of these recipes are very exact. I just kind of improvised as I went along. Tasting and tweaking and adding seasonings as needed.

Fried Chicken

lots of chicken (maybe 1-3 pieces per person, depending on appetite and cut of meat)
kosher salt
1 1/2 cups flour (plus another 1 1/2 cups repeating, as needed)
ground pepper
garlic powder
cayenne powder
8-10 cups vegetable oil (enough to fill large skillet a little less than half way)

Put all chicken in a large pot. In another container, mix water and kosher salt until mixture tastes salty. Add enough of water to cover top of chicken. Let the chicken sit in the brine for 7-8 hours.

Cover bottom of large casserole dish with flour. Add pepper, garlic, cayenne powder, and salt to taste (maybe 4 tablespoons of salt, a teaspoon or two of pepper, and a few generous dashes of the garlic and cayenne powder). Make sure that the seasonings are uniformly distributed in the dish. If you need more flour or find the mixture getting soggy, add another 1 1/2 cups of flour along with the same amounts of the seasonings to keep everything in proportion.

Remove chicken from brine and shake of excess liquid. Roll chicken in flour mixture until thoroughly coated. Dip chicken back into the brine and coat in flour again. Wait 20-30 minutes before frying. This step helps ensure crispier skin.

Meanwhile, the oil should be heating up in a heavy skillet. You want it to be around 350-360 degrees. A food thermometer is helpful. But if you don't have one, try sprinkling some flour on the oil. If it sizzles and then cooks off almost immediately, it is probably ready. Add chicken 2-3 pieces at a time. If you add too many at once, the temperature will drop too much. The chicken should cook for about 10 minutes per side. Remove from oil and pierce the chicken with a sharp knife to check to ensure its cooked through thoroughly. Drain on paper towels.


Now for the black-eyed peas. The original recipe called for dried beans, but it was New Year's Day and I was not hiking all over Boston/Brookline/Brighton to find them. The closest, non-Whole Foods grocery store to my house is a very small Shaw's. Like five aisles small so the selection is not especially good. But after buying the cans of beans, I decided I needed to be authentic and use ham hocks, as the original recipe called for (and for the "good health" it would bring). So I walked to four separate grocery stores, only to not find ham hock (bacon substitutes instead) and still use canned beans. But it was good exercise.

Southern-style Black-Eyed Peas

4 15 oz. cans of black eyed peas
2 large yellow onions, chopped
a package of bacon (preferably smoked)
a bunch of collard greens
salt
ground pepper
Tabasco sauce
whatever other seasonings you so desire

Cook bacon. Reserve some of the grease for the onions and pour the rest into a large pot with the beans and water to just cover the top. Chop the collard greens and add to pot. Tear up the bacon and add to pot. Brown the onions. I just kind of improvised on the time. Add onions to pot. Turn the heat on medium-high until the water starts to boil. Turn the heat down and let the pot simmer for a couple of hours until the water boils off and the beans have thickened. Serve with cornbread.