Purple Hull Pea Salad and Butternut Squash Galettes

It’s going to take a bit of explaining to tell you how this dish came to be. First, some beautiful, fresh things like purple hull peas, a butternut squash, cucumbers, sweet peppers, and cherry tomatoes had just arrived from Farmhouse Delivery. If you’ve never tried purple hull peas, they’re similar to black-eyed peas with a slightly milder flavor. When they’re freshly picked, they cook to a nice state of tenderness in about twenty minutes. I’d been holding onto a recipe from Saveur magazine just waiting for some fresh field peas to come into season so I could try it. That recipe was from a story about Senegalese cooking that included dishes made with black-eyed peas, okra, and hot chiles. The recipes were perfectly suited to what grows well here. So, from that story, I wanted to try the Saladu Nebbe which is a black-eyed pea salad with lime juice, parsley, tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, and habanero. I made it with purple hull peas rather than black-eyed peas. On a completely different topic, I’d also been looking longingly at some little potato galettes from an old issue of Living magazine. I believe the page for these galettes was cut from a 2003 issue and the exact recipe isn’t online, but they’re simple, small rounds made up of very thin slices of potato. I got a crazy idea to try making the same thing with butternut squash instead of potato and then imagined the big flavors of the purple hull pea salad would marry well with a sweet, crispy galette. And, just like that, the dish you see here was created.

I admit the galettes would be easier to make with potato than with butternut squash. The squash slices didn’t stick together while cooking quite as well as potato slices would. After flipping each galette, I did have to push a few squash slices back into place to keep the round shape. I started by peeling a butternut squash and cutting off the straight section. That straight part was cut in half lengthwise and then thinly sliced on a Benriner. Olive oil and butter were heated in a large skillet, and a round galette was formed by layering the squash slices in a circle in the skillet. Each galette was made up of two layers of squash slices. The galette was seasoned with salt and pepper, and a smaller skillet was set on top of the galette to keep it very flat. After a few minutes, the galette was flipped, a few squash slices that slid out of position were pushed back into place, it was seasoned with salt and pepper again, and the small skillet went back on top. For the salad, the purple hull peas were cooked in water for about twenty minutes and then drained and set aside. The dressing was made by whisking chopped parsley and lime juice while drizzling in canola oil. Then, chopped green onion, sweet peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, and a seeded, finely chopped habanero were combined in a big bowl. The dressing was added, and the salad was seasoned with salt and pepper. After tossing to combine, the salad was left to sit at room temperature for about an hour so the flavors could get acquainted.

This dish might have come about in a less than obvious way, but I was happy with the result. The finished galettes were crispy on the edges, tender in the middle, sweet, and buttery all at once. And, the fresh, bright, and spicy flavors of the salad were a good match. I always find good ideas in my recipe files, and who knows what they'll inspire next.

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Shell Beans and Summer Vegetables Stew with Cornbread

Fresh, local vegetables inspired a southern vegetarian meal that started with watermelon margaritas and fried okra. For the main course, I turned once again to the book Local Flavors in which Deborah Madison creates a summer vegetable stew that combined all the local vegetables I had on hand. The stew also incorporates fresh shell beans which are beans that are too large to be eaten in their pods and not yet fully dried. Some typical shell beans are borlotti, white runner beans, and cranberry beans, and soybeans and purple-hull beans can be eaten this way too. Purple-hull beans are a common Texas crop, and they’re available right now in their fresh form. Shell beans do not require soaking and cook in about 30 to 40 minutes. With my CSA vegetables, locally grown beans, and homegrown herbs, I had what I needed for a summer stew.

Sticking with the southern theme, cornbread was a natural to go with the stew, and this was a great excuse to use my cast-iron corn stick mold. My Mom gave this pan to me a couple of years ago, and I hadn’t gotten around to using it, but I love it because it’s something I have in common with Jacques Pepin. In Chez Jacques, in the story about fried chicken and cornbread, he describes a cast-iron cornbread mold with seven corn-shaped indentations which is exactly like mine. So, he wrote a recipe for cornbread that makes just enough batter to fill that mold, but he admits he sometimes has extra that he bakes separately in a small pan. I followed his recipe which interestingly involved separating eggs, frothing egg whites, and then folding them into the batter. I ended up with a little more batter than I needed and baked a small square of cornbread in addition to the molded sticks.

Preparing the stew was a simple process of adding the vegetables in the correct order for cooking times and seasoning each layer as it was added. To begin, olive oil was warmed in a Dutch oven over low heat, and bay leaves from my struggling to survive tree were added. Then big chunks of onions and halved garlic cloves were added with thyme sprigs and sage leaves. That was covered and left to cook while the rest of the vegetables were cleaned and chopped. Then, carrots were added followed by potatoes and then green beans. Big strips of bell pepper and thick pieces of pattypan squash went on top of all of that, and last but not least were tomatoes with their juices. That was all left to simmer for about an hour while the purple-hull beans cooked with some garlic and thyme. When the shell beans were cooked, they were added with their cooking liquid to the stew. A quick basil pesto was made to garnish each serving of stew.

Given how little effort went into the layering and simmering of the stew, the resulting flavor was surprisingly good. The herbs had mingled their way through the sauce of the stew and gave it a richness I didn’t expect. The low heat allowed the vegetables to retain their shape and some texture, and the garlic had mellowed to a nice state. By stirring the basil pesto into the bowl of stew, a sharper, brighter herb and garlic flavor was added. It was a fresh, warm bowl of summer, and it couldn’t have asked for better company than the cornbread.

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