The “caviar” on my mind these days involves black-eyed peas, not those extravagant little fish eggs.  Marinated with chiles, onions, bell pepper, corn and tomatoes, the humble legumes are transformed into the classic Texas caviar.

This chunky salsa is a staple in the Lone Star State—a little bit Southern, a little bit Mexican, and altogether irresistible.  Countless variations have made the round of backyard barbecues and tailgate parties since the 1950s, but the original was the creation of Texas culinary star Helen Corbitt, a cookbook author who served as food consultant for Neiman-Marcus in Dallas.

I’ve been thinking about this dish ever since I made it for good luck last month.  Southern folklore says you’ll get a dollar in the coming year for every black-eyed pea you eat on New Year’s Day.  Inflation has sort of reduced the fiscal return on that deal, I’m afraid.  I can’t eat enough peas to make a difference in my bank balance, but it still makes me feel good to uphold tradition.

Super Bowl is my excuse for sharing it now.  I don’t care much for football, but I do like the snacks.

This recipe updates the original, with home-cooked peas rather than canned, and adds tomatoes and corn kernels for color, texture, and fresher flavor.  I’ve reduced the oil a little, too.  It would be a guilt-free indulgence if I could just pass on the tortilla chips. But we all know that’s not likely.

Don’t be put off by the idea of cooking the peas from scratch.  There’s nothing to it.  They don’t require soaking in advance and cook more quickly than you would imagine—usually about an hour of untended simmering.  Or you can throw them in a slow cooker (after soaking) for 3-4 hours on high.

The cooking time will depend on how dry the peas are. When they’re tender to the bite, they’re done.  Just remember not to add salt until the end of the cooking time since it is thought to make beans tough.

Alternatively, just open the cans.  I found cans of organic black-eyed peas at Whole Foods that were quite good and not too salty.

Even with canned peas, this salsa would be the star of any casual get-together.  Say, a Super Bowl party?

Pour an extraordinary cocktail, set out some irresistible nibbles, and you’re ready for a celebration.

My search for the perfect New Year’s Eve libation this year led me to the “PDT Cocktail Book,”: by Jim Meehan (Sterling Epicure, 2011).  Illustrated with Chris Gall’s colorful woodcut engravings, the book is an engaging and often esoteric guide to the artisan cocktails created for the speakeasy-style Manhattan bar, Please Don’t Tell.  It’s such a hit that I couldn’t find a hardback version anywhere so I downloaded the e-book version.

Meehan is known as one of the most innovative mixologists in a new generation of gourmet bartenders.  He builds his drinks from an impressive stock of unusual and hard-to-find ingredients. Just hunting down all the components is a challenge, as writer Jeff Gordiner recounted in the New York Times earlier this month.

We couldn’t track down many of the special spirits and mixers Meehan specifies for his cocktails but we substituted the best ingredients available in local stores.  The results, if not absolutely authentic, were always impressive, with a complexity of flavor rarely found in home-mixed drinks.

The cosmopolitan made with Hangar One Buddha’s Hand Vodka, which is distilled nearby in Alameda, was a perfect balance of citrus and tart cranberry flavors with just a touch of sweetness. Meehan gives credit to Cheryl Cooke of Miami, Fla. who is believed to have created the first cosmo in the mid-1980s.

To complement the cosmo, I’ve been playing around with a new cracker recipe combining the Southern classics of pimento cheese spread and cheese straws.  I’ve added minced pimentos to the usual sharp cheddar and ditched the cookie press in favor of a simpler slice-and-bake shaping technique.  The dough can be stored in the freezer and baked off at the last minute.

With this cocktail in your glass and these crackers on your plate, the prospects for 2012 will look very good indeed.

Most Oktoberfest menus are pretty predictable — oceans of beer, mountains of sausage, sauerkraut, and maybe freshly baked pretzels.

Santa Cruz, though, takes pride in leaning off-center.  The music at Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery’s fifth annual Sausagefest last weekend was country.  Frauleins sported elaborate tattoos with their flirty barmaid drindls.  And the popular Penny Ice Creamery served beer ice cream.

There weren’t a lot of takers  for the Devout Stout-flavored ice cream early in the evening, but I couldn’t resist.  A scoop in a pint jar with a little of the same beer was the best thing I had all night.  It was thick, creamy and lightly sweet with flavors of coffee, caramel and a pleasantly bitter hint of burnt sugar.  Even before I left, I knew I was going to have to try to make it at home.

It turns out that beer ice cream isn’t that rare.  Mentions can be found all over the Internet.  Most of the recipes don’t sound very appealing, however.  Some don’t bother to cook the eggs.  Others add molasses or chocolate to round out the beer flavors.

I decided to riff off a basic French-style vanilla ice cream.  First, I reduced some good dark beer with a little brown sugar to make a syrup and cook off most of the alcohol.  Then I substituted the beer syrup for some of the cream in the formula.  It turned out even better than I hoped.

The secret to good beer ice cream, of course, is good beer.  A can of Bud just won’t do. But any well-crafted stout or porter is worth a try.

The artisan Devout Stout is a wonderful, dark and deeply flavored brew.  I would have used it if we could have found any in all the usual places.  When we didn’t, I turned to that reliable supermarket standby, Guiness Extra Stout, for the first batch.

It was very nice although a little rough around the edges.  If I hadn’t tasted the Devout Stout ice cream, I would have declared it a winner.

Still, I knew the ice cream could be better.  So I snagged some Black Butte Porter, my husband’s favorite, for the next try.  Smoother and more nuanced, it was just right.

The only thing better than this ice cream is a float made with the same beer.  Give it a try. You’ll be amazed.

Hummus often is the easiest dish to skip at a party.  It’s that creamy beige dip in a plastic tub that someone picked up at the store on the way to the host’s house.  It’s pleasant enough if the processor hasn’t used too much citric acid as a preservative but hardly worth the calories when there are more exciting choices on the table.

At least that’s what I always thought until I was coaxed into sampling the garlicky hummus offered at a farmers market in Santa Clara.  Who knew that such a silky, seductive dip could come from pureed chickpeas laced with mellow garlic and spices?  I was hooked.

I knew I had to make my own if I were to satisfy my cravings, though.  And canned chickpeas — better known on the West Coast as garbanzos — just wouldn’t do, even if I slipped off the skins for a smoother puree as many cooks advise.  Besides, dried chickpeas are quite cheap in the bulk bins and aren’t that difficult to prepare, given a little advance planning.

I made a couple versions of hummus soon after I acquired a VitaMix blender this summer, but they weren’t quite right.  One was too bland, the other too watery. So when I was invited to a party thrown by food-loving friends last weekend, I decided to try again to come up with a new variation that could hold it’s own against all the tempting cheeses and hors d’oeuvre I knew would crowd the appetizer table.

Photo by Charlie McCollum

Starting with a basic recipe from the Greek cookbook, “The Olive and the Caper,” by Susanna Hoffman (Workman, 2004), I began pumping up the flavor.  Garlic was roasted for nuttier flavor and so was the sesame paste, known as tahini.  I increased the lemon  juice, cumin and coriander seeds and reduced the water.

The result was an exceptionally smooth and almost buttery puree with a hint of lemon and savory undertones of garlic and spice.  It was light, flavorful and almost irresistible.  I kept finding excuses to dip a spoon into the bowl to check the seasonings.

It was a hit at the party, too, though the home baked pita sprinkled with zatar certainly helped.  (Zatar is a wild thyme-based spice mix sold at Middle Eastern markets or online at Penzey’s Spices.  Alternatively, you can make a fair approximation at home from the recipe below.)

The pita looks impressive and tastes far better than any store-bought flat bread, but it’s really not hard to make.  Just divide any basic bread dough — the whole wheat pizza dough from Trader Joe’s works well —  into balls about 2 inches in diameter. Flatten the balls, then roll out to ¼ inch or thinner. (I use a tortilla press to speed things up.)  Brush each circle of dough lightly with water, sprinkle with zatar, and bake on a pizza stone for 5 minutes or so at 475 degrees.

Serve this at your next party and no one will pass over the hummus.

Real barbecue is the antithesis of grilling.  There’s nothing quick and easy about it.  To properly cook a pork shoulder over smoldering coals for hours until its tender, moist and humming with smoky flavor takes patience and attention to detail.

So it’s no wonder we only pull out the smoker now and then.  Every time, we bite into pulled pork straight out of the smoker, though, we regret that we don’t do it more often.

It’s hard to beat the taste of well-marbled pork cooked until the outer layer becomes deep brown and crusty.  Pile it on a bun with tangy, crunchy cole slaw and life doesn’t get much better.

This is a can’t-miss dish for a party.  And just the thing for the waning days of the summer vacation season.

The recipe is an adaption of  The Renowned Mr. Brown from Cheryl and Bill Jamison’s “Smoke & Spice” (Harvard Common Press, 2003).   We use a Weber Smoky Mountain vertical water smoker, known affectionately by its fans as the Bullet. It’s solidly built, and the heavy metal body holds heat well.

However, it’s also possible to smoke the pork on an ordinary charcoal grill using the indirect method. Barbecue guru Steven Raichlen explains the technique here.  The critical elements are low, even temperatures and time — 6-10 hours of time.

And of course, there’s the all-important question of sauce and cole slaw.  I prefer the South Carolina mustard sauce I found in ”Steven Raichlen’s BBQ USA” (Workman, 2003) and the creamy, vinegar-laced slaw from ”Thrill of the Grill” by Chris Schlesinger & John Willoughby (Morrow, 1990)  Put them all together and you have a sandwich you’ll never forget.

Sure, real barbecue takes time and effort. But it’s worth it.

Baking for Passover is a challenge, especially for cooks who weren’t raised in the Jewish tradition.  Dietary restrictions forbid the use of wheat flour, leavening — even confectioner’s sugar and vanilla extract, which rules out most of the average home baker’s best recipes.

Yet dessert is the one course where there’s room for innovation in a menu bound by tradition.  The brisket may have to be braised Great Aunt Ethel’s way for the seder every year and the matzo balls prepared according to an old family recipe, but everyone’s open to new delights by the end of the meal.  A guest can feel safe contributing something sweet to the feast.

This year, I’ve been playing around with a variation on the macaroons that I initially found in Jacques Pepin’s ”Fast Food My Way” (Houghton Mifflin, 2004).  I’ve adapted the recipe over the years to the point where Pepin probably wouldn’t recognize it anymore.

These are not your delicate, colorful Parisian macarons a la the famous patisserie, Pierre Herme.  They’re sturdy, chewy, home-style macaroons with deep almond flavor, a hint of orange  and a filling of bittersweet chocolate ganache.  Crunchy on the edges, they get softer and chewier in the middle as they stand.

As an added benefit, these cookies are gluten-free.

The dough is whirled together quickly in a food processor.  The only real trick is to leave plenty of space on the baking sheet for the cookies to spread.  If you’re not careful in portioning out the dough, the cookies can end up misshapen as well.  I’ve had best results by using a zippered plastic bag as a makeshift pastry bag and piping the dough onto the baking sheet in circles.  But spoons and small scoops will do.

Pepin’s original recipe uses prepared almond paste, which really speeds up the process.  I’ve substituted homemade almond paste to make the cookies more acceptable as a Passover dessert.  It only takes a couple of minutes to whirl together and the taste is fresher, with more pronounced almond flavor.

To balance the sweetness of the cookie base, I’ve also introduced a bittersweet chocolate ganache in the place of Pepin’s apricot jam filling.  That does create a problem for people who keep strictly Kosher, though, since the ganache brings a prohibited dairy element into a meal featuring meat.

A marmalade filling, suggested by my friend Sheila Himmel, is a better choice if seder participants observe Kosher dietary rules.

As much as I’d love to, I’ve never been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.  The memory of  the great food I ate on my one trip to the Big Easy still lingers, though.

About this time of year, I always start thinking about celebrating Mardi Gras at home with some of those unforgettable flavors. There’s no way I can hope to recreate the fabulous Gulf Coast seafood where I live, of course.  But it’s not that difficult to approximate  the savory satisfaction of the muffuletta sandwiches made legendary by Central Grocery in the French quarter near the turn of the last century.

The sandwich takes its name from a large, rather soft loaf of Sicilian bread dusted with sesame seeds. Afficionados insist you can’t make a muffuletta without it.

The bread is not widely available, however, and I’m not that fond of squishy bread anyway.  As far as I’m concerned, the irresistible element of a muffuletta is the briny olive salad tucked inside with good salumi and cheese. The salad is simple to make with olives, capers and the pickled mix of vegetables Italians call giardiniera.

To mix things up a little, I’ve turned the muffuletta into a miniature sandwich perfect for a picnic or a party platter at any time of the year.  I took some along on a hike recently and my friends were as enthusiastic as I am.

These little sandwiches can be made on ordinary sourdough dinner rolls.  Just be sure the crust is not too hard to bite through easily.  Use the best meat and cheese you can find and make the olive salad a day ahead to allow the flavors to meld.

If you can’t make it to New Orleans either this year,  mini muffulettas will take you there in spirit.

Whether you’ve been hiking in the woods or just sprawled on the couch watching the big game, a hot bowl of chili is always welcome on a crisp winter day.  If it’s spent all day bubbling away in a slow cooker while you were playing, all the better.

In preparation for Super Bowl Sunday, I’ve been working on a slow cooker chili recipe for the last couple of  weeks.  We’ve eaten more chili than I would recommend, but the end result is a deeply flavorful stew of home-cooked beans, lively spice and savory turkey.  It’s hearty enough to satisfy the most devoted chili head, yet still low in fat if you don’t pile on the condiments.

I realize there are plenty of chili recipes in circulation already that can be thrown together and left to simmer for hours in a slow cooker.  Most are pretty basic, though, and I wanted a chili that tasted like I had tended it all day.  To pump up the flavor, I use pure ground chile, cumin, coriander, Mexican oregano and a pinch of cinnamon along with a touch of cocoa at the end.  Inexpensive turkey legs and thighs take the place of the usual ground meat.

Beans add nutrition, fiber and lovely background for the vibrant spices.  Although you could use canned beans instead, I don’t like their spongy texture or salty flavor. I cook my own the day before and freeze the leftovers for a later meal.

Since the chili must cook for 8-10 hours, you may want to assemble the ingredients in the crock insert the night before and chill the whole thing in the fridge.  The next morning, pop it in the cooker and turn it on.  The chili will only take about half an hour longer to cook and you’ll be free for the day.

Although I find the slow cooker useful, I don’t use it all the time.  So I had a couple of things to learn during the course of developing this recipe.

Number one:  Don’t expect a 4-quart cooker to brew up a big batch of chili.  By the time I had added all the ingredients I thought I needed for this recipe, my old cooker was almost overflowing and the turkey took far longer than expected to cook through.  If I had read the instruction book, I would have known you shouldn’t fill the crock more than 3/4 full.

I went shopping for a new cooker.  The one I bought, the 6 1/2-quart Crock Pot Touch Screen model, received top marks from Cook’s Illustrated and I was impressed with how much better it performed.  The temperature stayed steady at about 200 degrees once the cooker brought the chili up to “low.”  Although it’s significantly more expensive than many cookers on the market, I liked the fact that you can program it to cook for up to 20 hours on high.  When the cooking time is up, it automatically shifts to the warm setting for up to six hours.

Number two: Watch your liquids.  Because a slow cooker is a closed environment, liquid does not evaporate during the course of cooking.  In fact, more liquid is drawn out of the vegetables and meats.  That makes a tasty broth, but not if you’ve added too much liquid in the first place.  My second batch was watery and dull because I didn’t drain the beans or tomatoes at the beginning.

The third try was the charm.  This chili was thick and meaty, sweet with tomatoes and ripe peppers and spiced with enough ground chile to tickle the tongue without searing the palate.  Add more chile if you crave heat.

2010 has been a pretty tough year given all the nasty political battles and continuing economic uncertainty.  I, for one, will be happy to bid it adieu Friday night.

To toast the arrival of 2011, I’ve come up with a new cocktail — one that brings together the old and the new with a dash of gin, a multitude of tiny bubbles and the lively spark of pomegranate.  It began as a French 75, the World War I favorite of the Lost Generation of Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

My family is calling this variation the Ruby Bullet.  Paired with hot, puffy gougeres, it’s bound to enliven any New Year’s Eve celebration.

Just as potent as the French 75, which drew its name from a French howitzer, the Ruby Bullet calls for fresh pomegranate juice to replace the lemon juice in the original.  If you can’t find freshly squeezed juice and don’t want to prepare your own, pomegranate liqueur will work in a pinch.

We experimented, too, with substituting vodka for the gin specified in the version first served at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. Ultimately, though, we decided to stick with gin, which offers a complex  herbal  backdrop for the exotic fruit.   We also opted for inexpensive Spanish cava rather than pricey champagne from France.

Since every cocktail deserves a complementary nibble, I’m also sharing a recipe for black pepper and thyme gougeres.  It comes straight out of “Tartine,” by renowned San Francisco bakers Elisabeth Pruett and Chad Robertson (Chronicle Books, 2006).  One really shouldn’t mess with perfection.

The only change I’ve made is to portion the dough out onto the baking sheets with a 1 tablespoon cookie scoop.   That’s far easier for most home cooks to manage than piping the dough through a pastry bag.  The cheesy puffs bake up beautifully and taste just as great as they look.

A couple of these tasty gougeres and a flute of Ruby Bullet will cast even 2010 in a rosy light.

A perfectly ripe pear is a joy unto itself, requiring little more than a bit of cheese and a handful of nuts to make a memorable dessert.

Sadly, I haven’t encountered many perfect pears.

The pears of my experience tend to be hard as rocks at the market, only to bruise and scar in the bag on the trip home, then turn to mush almost overnight on the kitchen counter.  Sometime in between, I know there is a point when they’re just right, the flesh still slightly firm, the sweet juices flowing freely.  But I miss it more often than not.

Still, I can’t resist the promise of pears.  Every fall, I find myself buying gorgeous pears at the peak of the season in the hope I can catch a few at the elusive moment of perfection.  It’s a good thing I have this cake as Plan B for the fruit that doesn’t measure up. It’s especially good with Bosc pears.

Moist and spicy with the subtle flavor of pear and the crunch of walnuts, this is just the cake I want for holiday brunches and buffets.  Although it has plenty of sugar and fat, it feels like a healthful option compared to most holiday sweets.

The recipe is inspired by a fresh apple cake I found while browsing through a three-decade-old James Beard cookbook, “The New James Beard” (Knopf, 1981).  I’ve updated it by reducing the oil, shifting the balance of spices, introducing whole wheat pastry flour and eliminating the final glaze.  The result is a cake with a dense crumb and a wonderfully crisp and crusty top.

In keeping with its rustic character, this is a fairly simple cake to put together.  Since there’s no butter to cream,  it easily could be stirred together by hand, although I rely on an electric mixer.  The flour, baking soda and spices are whisked together instead of sifted.

I assemble all the ingredients before peeling and chopping the pears since the flesh turns brown so quickly once it’s exposed to the air.

The basic recipe is pretty adaptable.  You could substitute apples, persimmons or frozen blueberries for the pears.  Any neutral vegetable oil will do, too, although I prefer the flavor of sunflower oil.

The next time life hands you imperfect pears, remember, there’s always a cake to bake.