Black-eyed pea salsa with chili powder, fresh tomatoes and bell pepper—a perfect complement for curry-marinated steaks—can also liven up grilled fish or chicken breasts. Recipes below.
We’ve just returned from a wonderful visit to the mountains of northern New Mexico—Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos and Los Alamos. For next week’s post, I plan to try to cook one of our favorite traditional New Mexican dishes we had there. This week, though, things are a little too hectic for the cooking of anything interesting. So I’m revisiting something from the Blue Kitchen archives. And while it has nothing to do with New Mexican cuisine, it’s got a lively, big flavor that reminds me of some of the great meals we had on our trip.
I love red meat. Growing up, though, ground was about the only kind of beef I knew, aside from the occasional stringy pot roast—burgers, meatloaf, spaghetti sauce, more meatloaf… I wasn’t introduced to the wonders of steak until I was in college, and then it was at one of those cafeteria-style joints called BEST STEAK HOUSE [or something equally overpromising] where you watch hairy-armed men tossing steaks on permanently charred grills with flames shooting up all around as the fat sizzled off. A steak dinner with baked potato and iceberg lettuce salad set you back maybe four or five bucks, and it was love at first gristly bite.
I have since graduated to better cuts of meat—and from medium-well to medium to medium-rare to rare. But the pure primal satisfaction that is steak remains undeniable.
Although one of my favorite ways to prepare steak is what I call my French bistro steak, seared in butter and the pan deglazed with red wine, the black-eyed pea salsa and curry marinade make these steaks another big favorite at our house.
Black-eyed peas are another food item very popular in the South [like the okra in my Creole Chicken and Okra Gumbo]. According to About.com, the black-eyed pea “is thought to have originated in North Africa, where it has been eaten for centuries. It may have been introduced into India as long as 3,000 years ago, and was also a staple of Greek and Roman diets. The peas were probably introduced to the New World by Spanish explorers and African slaves, and have become a common food in the southern United States, where they are available dried, fresh, canned, and frozen.”
Even though the salsa for this dish is named for black-eyed peas, there are lots of flavors at play here. When you first start cooking the green pepper and chili powder, the aroma will be less than encouraging. Don’t worry, though—when the other ingredients are added, it all comes together fabulously. And when it gets together with the steaks with their peppery curry marinade, the results are amazing. Continue reading “Black-eyed pea salsa, big-flavored steaks”