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We finished the hoppin' John on Friday night.  I'd made an enormous pot of it on New Year's Eve for our dinner party; even with the six of us eating platefuls of it, there was still enough left over for me and Lloyd to eat it every single night for the next week.  Normally when I have that much of anything left over, I get depressed around the third night of eating it, and when I suggest to Lloyd that we get some nice takeout, he never says no.  Hoppin' John is the exception to the rule.  I have yet to feel that sinking feeling that comes from having too much of a good thing.  The prospect of coming home to a third or fourth night of hoppin' John is not despair, but rather relief and happy anticipation.  There is always a moment of fear when I tell Lloyd that yes, we're having beans and rice for dinner again, but fear is a silly thing, for Lloyd's response has never been "aGAIN?", but rather, "Yeah!  Pass the Trappey's!"  He's a smart fellow, Lloyd.

I went to bed last night with a head full of enthusiastic, overwrought prose in praise of hoppin' John, and the desire to get all the words out on paper.  I woke up this morning with what I thought was a weather-based headache, but turned out to be a mild bug of some sort, which sent me home ill and shaky, and completely unfit for doing justice to the topic.  If I were any sort of serious thinker, I would wait until I could put it all together.  Alas, I am not a serious thinker.  But I am -- at least I hope I am -- a friend to those in need, and based on the comments I received on Friday's picture post, a lot of friends are in need of some beans and rice. 

Before I get to the recipe, it helps to define terms a bit.  Karen Hess, in The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection, identifies hoppin' John as a bean pilau, a dish of the African diaspora.  One of the hallmarks of a pilau is the consistency of the rice:  it should be dry, not so dry as to be dried out, but dry enough so that each grain of rice maintains its individual integrity.  (This individual integrity is furthered by cooking the rice with sufficient fat to coat the cooked rice grains; again, we are not looking for an oily sheen, but just enough of a coating to further the texture and flavor of each grain.)  In the recipes that Mrs. Hess cites as the best examples of the dish, the preparation is simple: water is boiled with a piece of cured meat, usually a ham hock (although there are variant rice-and-bean dishes made in Muslim communities that use cured mutton or beef instead of pork); blackeyed peas are added and boiled until tender; at that point, the rice is added, the pot is covered, and the whole is steamed dry.  In general, the only seasoning in the dish is the ham hock, along with some pepper, usually ground black peppercorns, although Mrs. Hess points out that in early hoppin' John recipes, the spice was provided by whole cayenne peppers.  (Black peppercorns were an imported spice, and an expensive one, whereas cayenne peppers could be grown easily in the corner of a South Carolina kitchen garden.)  There are newer recipes that call for wider ranges of spices, but Mrs. Hess takes a dim view of these, stating that too many spices muddy the straightforward flavor of the dish, although she allows that an individual herb or spice could have its charm, the signature of a thoughtful and intuitive cook.  (I should mention that Mrs. Hess is not decrying forcefully-spiced bean dishes per se; in other works, she celebrates the "marvelous, aromatic" cuisine of the Indian subcontinent.  Her argument here is that a confluence of spice, added to blackeyed peas and rice, do not a hoppin' John make.)  I am a bit more lenient on the issue than she is, although I would agree that at some point, there is such a thing as too much seasoning -- and I agree wholeheartedly with her that the finished dish should be a dry, fluffy, flavor-rich bowl of pilau, not a stew-like mixture requiring the use of a thickener.  If it looks like risotto, it is not hoppin' John to me.

So much for what it is not.  Here, happily, is what it is.  My method here varies a bit from the traditional recipes I have started to collect:  I don't boil the hock before adding the beans; I cover the beans with cold water, drop the hock in and put the heat on.  Traditional recipes also call for equal volumes of beans and rice, i.e. a pint of beans to a pint of rice.  One night I was a bit distracted as I put this together, and instead of using equal volumes, I used equal weights.  I probably should do the weight/volume comparison, and determine just what the difference is between a pint of rice and a pound of rice, but I have to admit that the resulting hoppin' John was so good that I have made it this way ever since.  I have cut my usual proportions for this dish in half, as I'm not sure that there are too many people out there who want to eat this every day for a week.  Then again, I could be wrong.

Hoppin' John

(serves at least 6, depending on appetite)

1 small ham hock, or 1 large ham hock, split by the butcher (I prefer a cured, unsmoked hock, but these are not easy to find; if all you can find is a smoked hock, it will still be fine.)

1/2 pound blackeyed peas, picked over for stones and rinsed

1 1/2 quarts (6 cups) cold water

1 small red chile pepper, or 1/2 tsp. cracked black pepper

1/2 pound long-grain rice (I use Tilda basmati, but any long-grain rice, like jasmine or Carolina Gold, will work), rinsed thoroughly, soaked in cold water for 1/2 hour and drained

Place the ham hock and beans in a Dutch oven or soup pot, cover with the water, add the pepper and set the pot on the heat.  If a heavy scum forms on the cooking surface, skim it off.  Once the beans come to a boil, turn the heat down and let them cook, uncovered, for about an hour or until the beans are tender.  You don't need to fuss over them, but keep an eye on them; the water should be boiling, but gently; not a ferocious rolling boil.  The cooking water will turn black, but you should still have a sense of the water level; by the time the beans are tender, there should still be about an inch of water covering them.  If at any point the beans are in danger of boiling dry, add more water, but try to add only as much as you need to keep the water level at about 1".

Once the beans are tender, stir in the rice gently.  Bring the water back to a boil, cover the pot, turn the heat down to low and let the rice steam for 10-15 minutes.  (Check the pot after 10 minutes; the rice should look dry, but if there is still bubbling liquid, let it go for another 5 minutes.)  At the end of the cooking time, turn the heat off and keep the pot covered for 10 more minutes.  Remove the ham hock and fluff the rice gently with a large fork -- you can also use a spoon, but be very careful not to crush the rice grains.  Get some big bowls.  No, bigger than that.  Serve it forth.  Be prepared for conversation to cease at the moment everybody bites into the first blackeyed pea and realizes just how warm and soulful this food is.  This would be your hoppin' John.