A Dinner for the New Year: Chicken, Greens, and Black Eyed Peas

A traditional Southern New Year's dinner for many includes pork, greens, black eyed peas, and cornbread. The black eyed peas symbolize good luck. The greens (often collard greens) stand for money or prosperity and cornbread for gold. I've heard people say the pork represents a variety of things – progress and moving forward, a reminder to remain humble, health. Unfortunately, for me pork equates to nasty migraines, so we switched over to chicken for our New Year's meal. Some folks say eating chicken will make blessings fly in, so we'll go with that.

Black Eyed Peas

Ingredients
1 can black eyed peas
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced red bell pepper
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 1/2 c chicken broth
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp ground cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp coriander
1-2 tsp olive oil

Directions
1. Put the olive oil in a pot over medium heat.
2. Stir onions, bell pepper, garlic, and spices into olive oil and let cook until the onions and peppers begin to soften.
3. Drain and rinse the black eyed peas. Add them to the pot.
4. Add chicken broth. Cover and let simmer for about an hour and a half.











Beer Chicken

Ingredients
1 whole chicken (3-4 lbs)
3-4 tbsp butter
1 1/2 c beer (I went with Anchor Brewing's Christmas Ale.)
4 tbsp salt
1-2 tbsp oregano
2-3 tsp coriander
2-3 tsp black pepper
A few tablespoons of the liquid, onions, and bell pepper from the black eyed peas
water

Directions
1. Fill a large pot or bowl with enough hot water to fully cover the chicken. Stir in salt, oregano, coriander, and pepper. Put the chicken in and let it soak in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
2. Pre-heat oven to 450*F.
3. Remove chicken from the water and pat dry.
4. Cut butter into smaller pieces. Put some between the skin and the meat on the chicken (you may need to use a knife to pull the skin off the meat a little). Put the rest in the cavity of the chicken.
5. Truss the chicken. You can find lots of excellent directional videos online (who explain it probably far better than I could) and, if you look around, you can even find pre-trussed chicken at some grocery stores.
6. Smear a bit of butter on the bottom of a baking dish, just in case to make sure nothing sticks. Put the chicken in the pan, breast down.
7. Pour the beer over the chicken. I also added a few spoons of the liquid (with onions and peppers) from the black eyed peas, which had been cooking for about a half an hour at this point.
8. Cover with foil and put in the oven. Bake for about 30 minutes. Then remove the foil, lower the temperature to 400*F, and bake for another 30 minutes. I took the opportunity to throw the cornbread in with the chicken to bake when I dropped the temperature.
9. Remove the chicken from the pan and let rest (I set it on a cutting board) for at least 10 minutes before cutting.











Kale

Ingredients
3-4 cups of chopped kale
6-8 cups of water

Directions
1. Bring water to a boil.
2. Throw the kale in and cook until softened.
3. Strain and serve.











Tips
We served all of this with cornbread on the side, of course.

Happy 2012!