"NewYearsDay" news and stories

Happy New Year, all! Hope everyone had a warm, festive Eve and is relatively headache-free and rested post-revelry. Now, there are as many ways to prepare the cowpea and rice concoction of Hoppin' John as there are squares on a calendar, but in many parts of the American South, the definitive date to simmer up a big ol' pot of it is New Year's Day. While the name's origin is still the subject of some debate -- some scholars asserting that it's a corruption of "pois a pigeon," a Carribean dish enjoyed by Southern slaves while still in their native land, and others claiming it's derived from a 13th century Iraqi dish called "bhat kachang" -- the dish's fans maintain that eating it ensures good luck for the coming year. This may well be superstition, but I'm inclined toward any angle that's gonna get a bowlful of it in front of me on a chilly January 1st.

My grand revelation of the day (though likely hardly news to many of you) is that cowpeas are the genus for the group that contains blackeye peas (most commonly used in Hoppin' John), catjang, and yardlong beans. They're also called crowder peas.

Some recipes for Hoppin' John contain tomatoes or okra, and the swap in of okra for the beans makes it a Limpin' Susie.

Got a favorite variation? Share it below, and peruse my favorite recipe after the jump.

Yes, of course it's already three days into the new year, but until I get used to signing my checks with 2006, I can still talk about the New Year. (Checks? You still use checks to make payments?! Yes, I do. For my apartment rent.)

We had some delicious, warm, comforting and hearty dduk-gook on January 1, as the Koreans do to usher in the New Year. But it's not only the rice dumpling soup that Koreans eat on New Year's Day. We eat all kinds of dduk.

For the dduk uninitiated, "dduk" is a general term for a whole family of dumpling- or cake-like foods made with a base of rice flour. Many people will call it a "rice cake," but I don't, since dduk is absolutely nothing like those detestable diet puffed rice styrofoam disks. Korean dduk is similar to Japanese mochi, and comes in a huge variety of shapes, sizes, flavors, and colors.

Dduk used in soups and in savory Korean dishes are made from only regular rice flour. Sweet dduk (not really a dessert, but more like a snack), like the ones we received in a giant gift box from my sister's parents-in-law, are more often made with flour made from sweet rice, called chap-sahl. Sweet dduk can be made from chap-sahl mixed with different dried fruits, beans and grains (many of which have "medicinal" benefits), coated in different grain flours (that are usually naturally sweet), and filled with honey, sesame seeds, or sweet red bean paste.