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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2021/01/cannonball-adderley-hoppin-john-jazz.html for the related pancocojams post entitled "Cannonball Adderley- "Hoppin' John" (Jazz sound file with information about Cannonball Adderley)".
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INFORMATION ABOUT "HOPPIN JOHN"
Excerpt #1
From https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/12/southern-hoppin-john-new-years-tradition.html
"The Historic Problem With Hoppin' John" written by Robert Moss, Published: December 24, 2014 Last Updated: December 22, 2020
"New Year's Day is approaching, which means we need to have a
little talk about Hoppin' John. A savory blend of rice and black-eyed peas,
it's served alongside collard greens as the traditional New Year's Day meal in
the South and, increasingly, in other parts of the country. Eating those two
dishes will ensure prosperity in the new year, and the collards represent
greenbacks and the black-eyed peas coins. Or so they say.
For a long time, if offered a plate of collards and Hoppin' John on New Years, I would have been inclined to say, "keep the change," for I never understood why anyone made a fuss over a mushy mound of rice and black-eyed peas.
My own initial effort at making the dish began with a can of black-eyed peas and store-brand white rice and ended up in the garbage. Later, seeing the error of my ways, I tried starting with dried black-eyed peas, cooking them in homemade chicken stock and goosing them with onions, garlic, and a parade of herbs in a futile attempt to impose flavor on a fundamentally mild dish.
Hoppin' John is the textbook example of how hard it can be to recreate the traditional dishes of the antebellum Southern kitchen, and it's not just a matter of recipe or technique. You can dig up old 19th century "receipts" (as they were called back then), follow them to the letter, and still end up mystified that anyone could ever have loved such stuff, much less decided it was an iconic Southern dish.
The problem with once-great iconic food often comes down to ingredients: A key element of the dish either is no longer anymore or, more frequently, is widely available but in a greatly debased form. In the case of Hoppin' John, modern versions can come up short because every single one of its ingredients are but pale shadows of their former selves.
A Rice and Bean Dish
In The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection (1992),
the late culinary historian Karen Hess dug deep into the roots of Hoppin' John,
which she categorized as one of the "bean pilaus of the African
diaspora." Pilau (or, as it is often spelled, perlo or purloo) was the
signature dish of the Carolina rice lands. Related to the Turkish pilaf and the
Spanish paella, it consists of rice that is washed and pre-soaked then simmered
in a flavored broth until the liquid is almost fully absorbed and each grain
stands out separate and distinct.
In classic Carolina pilaus, chicken or shrimp were often cooked in the pot along with the rice. When the broth was flavored with bacon and peas or beans incorporated, it became the dish known as Hoppin' John. That technique of cooking rice and beans together was African in origin, and it spread to every part of the Americas that had a significant African presence. Each location developed its own distinctive rice and bean dishes—the Moros y Cristianos of Cuba (made with black beans), the Pois et Riz Collé of Louisiana (made with red beans), and the Hoppin' John of the South Carolina Lowcountry.
First put on the peas, and when half boiled, add the bacon. When the peas are well boiled, throw in the rice, which must first be washed and gravelled. When the rice has been boiling half an hour, take the pot off the fire and put it on coals to steam, as in boiling rice alone.
The last instruction reflects the traditional Carolina way of making rice, isn't quite like most people make it today. Rather than cooking it 20 minutes until all the water was absorbed, cooks boiled it in a large amount of salted water until the grains had become swollen. Then the excess water was drained off and the pot was left on the ashes to allow to "soak"—that is, to essentially steam over low heat till each of the snowy white grains stood dry and perfectly separate and distinct.
Also key is the kind of peas used, for early Hoppin' John recipes call not for black-eyed peas but "red peas" or "cow peas." In 1895, visitors from all over the country sampled Hopping John at the Atlanta Exposition. An article in the Cleveland Leader captured a northern housekeeper's reaction to it. "I tried to make the dish once . . . and it was squishy and messy and unlovely to look upon. Then I ate the Southern one. It was delightful. The grains of rice and the peas stood apart, yet together, as it were, the purplish peas colored the rice to their own hue, and the whole was seasoned satisfactorily with savory bacon." That purplish hue is a hallmark of Hoppin' John made with old-fashioned peas.
As for the origin of the dish's name, I can't put it any better than Karen Hess did in The Carolina Rice Kitchen: "Most of the proposed origins are demeaning to African-Americans, representing pop etymology of a low order." Some of these proposed origins, I would add, are demeaning to human intelligence in general, like the notion that it comes from "Hop in, John," supposedly an obscure South Carolina way of inviting a guest to come eat. It's obscure because nobody in South Carolina actually says that. (Such explanations belong to the school of food etymology that the Oxford English Dictionary has termed "an absurd conjecture suggested merely by the sound of the word" and I like to call "just making sh-t* up.")
The most commonly accepted explanation is that Hoppin' John is a corruption of the French phrase pois à pigeon, meaning "pigeon peas." Hess discounts that etymology, advancing her own contention that it comes via a long, circuitous route from the combination of kachang, a Malay word for peas, and bhat, the Hindi word for cooked rice, but I find that no more satisfying than any of the others. Lacking any supporting evidence, we might be best off to just say we don't know where it came from and leave it at that."....
-snip-
*This word is fully spelled out in that article.
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Excerpt #2
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoppin%27_John#:~:text=Hoppin'%20John%2C%20also%20known%20as,sliced%20bacon%2C%20seasoned%20with%20salt.
"Hoppin' John, also known as Carolina peas and rice, is a
peas and rice dish served in the Southern United States. It is made with
black-eyed peas (or red cowpeas such as iron and clay peas in the Southeast US)
and rice, chopped onion, and sliced bacon, seasoned with salt.[1] Some recipes
use ham hock, fatback, country sausage, or smoked turkey parts instead of
bacon. A few use green peppers or vinegar and spices. Smaller than black-eyed
peas, field peas are used in the South Carolina Lowcountry and coastal Georgia;
black-eyed peas are the norm elsewhere.
In the southern United States, eating Hoppin' John on New Year's Day is thought to bring a prosperous year filled with luck.[2][3] The peas are symbolic of pennies or coins, and a coin is sometimes added to the pot or left under the dinner bowls.[4] Collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, chard, kale, cabbage and similar leafy green vegetables served along with this dish are supposed to further add to the wealth, since they are the color of American currency.[5] Another traditional food, cornbread, can also be served to represent wealth, being the color of gold. On the day after New Year's Day, leftover "Hoppin' John" is called "Skippin' Jenny" and further demonstrates one's frugality, bringing a hope for an even better chance of prosperity in the New Year.[6]
Etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary's first reference to the dish
is from Frederick Law Olmsted's 19th century travelogue, A Journey in the
Seaboard Slave States (1861).[7] However, a recipe for "Hopping John"
in The Carolina Housewife by Sarah Rutledge,[8] which was published in 1847, is
also cited as the earliest reference.[9] An even earlier source is
Recollections of a Southern Matron,[10] which mentions "Hopping John"
(defined, in a note, as "bacon and rice") as early as 1838.[11] The
origins of the name are uncertain; one possibility is that the name is a
corruption of the Haitian Creole term for black-eyed peas: pois pigeons
(pronounced [pwapiˈʒɔ̃]), or "pigeon peas" in English.
History
Hoppin' John was originally a Lowcountry food before
spreading to the entire population of the South. Hoppin' John may have evolved
from rice and bean mixtures that were the subsistence of enslaved West Africans
en route to the Americas.[12] Hoppin' John has been further traced to similar
foods in West Africa,[9] in particular the Senegalese dish thiebou niebe.[13]
One tradition common in the United States is that each person at the meal should leave three peas on their plate to ensure that the New Year will be filled with luck, fortune and romance. Another tradition holds that counting the number of peas in a serving predicts the amount of luck (or wealth) that the diner will have in the coming year. On Sapelo Island in the community of Hog Hammock, Geechee red peas are used instead of black-eyed peas. Sea Island red peas are similar.[14]”….
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Excerpt #2
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoppin%27_John#:~:text=Hoppin'%20John%2C%20also%20known%20as,sliced%20bacon%2C%20seasoned%20with%20salt.
"Hoppin' John, also known as Carolina peas and rice, is a
peas and rice dish served in the Southern United States. It is made with
black-eyed peas (or red cowpeas such as iron and clay peas in the Southeast US)
and rice, chopped onion, and sliced bacon, seasoned with salt.[1] Some recipes
use ham hock, fatback, country sausage, or smoked turkey parts instead of
bacon. A few use green peppers or vinegar and spices. Smaller than black-eyed
peas, field peas are used in the South Carolina Lowcountry and coastal Georgia;
black-eyed peas are the norm elsewhere.
In the southern United States, eating Hoppin' John on New Year's Day is thought to bring a prosperous year filled with luck.[2][3] The peas are symbolic of pennies or coins, and a coin is sometimes added to the pot or left under the dinner bowls.[4] Collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, chard, kale, cabbage and similar leafy green vegetables served along with this dish are supposed to further add to the wealth, since they are the color of American currency.[5] Another traditional food, cornbread, can also be served to represent wealth, being the color of gold. On the day after New Year's Day, leftover "Hoppin' John" is called "Skippin' Jenny" and further demonstrates one's frugality, bringing a hope for an even better chance of prosperity in the New Year.[6]
Etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary's first reference to the dish
is from Frederick Law Olmsted's 19th century travelogue, A Journey in the
Seaboard Slave States (1861).[7] However, a recipe for "Hopping John"
in The Carolina Housewife by Sarah Rutledge,[8] which was published in 1847, is
also cited as the earliest reference.[9] An even earlier source is
Recollections of a Southern Matron,[10] which mentions "Hopping John"
(defined, in a note, as "bacon and rice") as early as 1838.[11] The
origins of the name are uncertain; one possibility is that the name is a
corruption of the Haitian Creole term for black-eyed peas: pois pigeons
(pronounced [pwapiˈʒɔ̃]), or "pigeon peas" in English.
History
Hoppin' John was originally a Lowcountry food before
spreading to the entire population of the South. Hoppin' John may have evolved
from rice and bean mixtures that were the subsistence of enslaved West Africans
en route to the Americas.[12] Hoppin' John has been further traced to similar
foods in West Africa,[9] in particular the Senegalese dish thiebou niebe.[13]
One tradition common in the United States is that each person at the meal should leave three peas on their plate to ensure that the New Year will be filled with luck, fortune and romance. Another tradition holds that counting the number of peas in a serving predicts the amount of luck (or wealth) that the diner will have in the coming year. On Sapelo Island in the community of Hog Hammock, Geechee red peas are used instead of black-eyed peas. Sea Island red peas are similar.[14]”….
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