Black-Eyed Pea Curry with Potatoes & Collards and Naan

Monday, January 20

Black-Eyed Pea Curry with Potatoes & Collards and Naan

Rating: 4.5    

I was already planning to make a black-eyed pea curry recipe from The Great Vegan Bean Book when Seth sent me a link to this recipe on the PPK, so I decided to make it instead. Now, it’s not a secret that I’m no fan of collards, but I figured if there was enough other stuff in there I might not mind them so much. Seth loves them, so I knew he’d really love it. I probably could have cut them up a little better because the pieces were kind of on the larger side, but still manageable. When I put the beans up to soak in the morning, I didn’t double-check the recipe so I ended up making twice as many black-eyed peas as I should have. I ended up using them all anyway. We love curries, but the recipes we’ve been using lately have been a little thinner than we’d like them to be. I was going to use less broth, but I figured the extra beans would fill it out a bit. I also used the whole can of coconut milk instead of just a cup. I did this because I like my curry more coconutty and I really hate having a little bit of a can leftover – too much to throw away, but not enough to really use for anything. Anyway, in went the extra beans and coconut milk. I only used one jalapeno instead of two because ours were kind of on the big side, but since I used all those beans, I really should have used both because it could have been spicier. We also skipped the salsa recipe that’s included on the website, and used russet potatoes instead of red, since that was what I had on hand. In spite of all the weird changes I made, it still came out really good - and we had boatloads of it, so Seth will have plenty for lunches this week. Since we were having an Indian curry, I decided we needed some fresh naan to go with it. Well, we always have naan with our Indian food, but we were out, so I had to make a fresh batch. I started the beans cooking and then made the dough and let it rise while they cooked. I congratulated myself on my amazing time-management skills. The naan recipe we use is in Vegan Eats World and it really isn’t hard to make, but it’s a little time consuming because you have to cook each loaf individually in a skillet. I suppose I could have used two skillets to speed things up a little. Anyway, the secret to how amazingly good this bread is is the yogurt (soy or coconut milk). It give it that extra soft, pillowy goodness that non-vegan naan has. We always make the garlic variation of the recipe, which really just means that I press a few (ok, several) cloves of garlic through the garlic press and work it into the dough before splitting into the 8 separate loaves for the second rise. The only change I make to the recipe is that I put it in a dry skillet instead of using margarine. The first time I made it, I found that the margarine scorched in the pan and kind of burned on the bread, so we just smear a little homemade vegan butter onto it right before we serve it. I like to sprinkle some parsley on top, too – fresh is best, but dried is pretty good if that’s all you’ve got on hand. Just put the leftover loaves (if you can stop yourself from eating them all at once) in the freezer and warm them up when you make your next Indian dinner. They only take a few minutes if you thaw them first. Oh, and they make really good personal size pizza crusts if you’re having a pizza emergency.