Loubia Latkes far Chanewyekah רוביא לאַטקעס אויף חנוסטער

Image of a platter of pancakes with Chanukah menorah

This year, for the first time in my memory, khanike coincides with Sylvester, the Gregorian New Year. Of course black-eyed pea pancakes are a wonderful idea any day of the year, but they seem especially apropos now, for the feast of Chanewyekah or khanister. My first attempt is an adaptation from Lord Krishna's Cuisine, by Yamuna Devi, a book whose influence on me is considerable.  Devi's Chowla Poora are thin, flat pancakes made with ground black-eyed peas.

In this recipe, we soak the peas for a day but do not cook them, and then grind them up and make them into pancake batter.  This technique will be familiar if you have made felafel or dal vada (both of which would also be great uses for black-eyed peas, I bet). Bear in mind that for some folks, raw legumes are allergenic.

I soaked the peas for longer than called for in the book, but still had difficulty getting them all decorticated, so I ended up making the recipe with some whole peas.

One of the things I learned from decortication black-eyed peas is that the black eyes are on the cortices and not the peas themselves. 

Image of skins from black-eyed peas with black eyes intact

 The naked peas are just eyeless white beans.

Image of decorticated black-eyed peas, looking like plain white beans

That's interesting.

My recipe is very close to the one in the Lord K's Cuisine.  I did not add any asafetida, and the soaking and resting times were much longer than those specified in the book.

Loubia Latkes

Adapted fro Lord Krishna's Cuisine by Yamuna Devi

1/2 pound (A generous cup) black-eyed peas

5 sprigs cilantro (1/4 cup leaves)

1 pinky nail-sized piece peeled ginger root

1 fresh green chile, seeded

2 strips lime zest

1/4 cup flour (chapati flour if you have it)

7 scrapings of nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon salt

about 3/4 cup oil for frying

Soak the peas in cool water for a day. drain and add fresh water and soak another several hours. 

Rub the peas between the palms of your hands to remove as much of the skins as possible. 

Grind the peas in a processor with cilantro, ginger, Chile, and lime zest. Add the flour, salt and spices and pulse to mix.  Allow the batter to rest half an hour (I allowed it to rest overnight)

Brush two griddles with oil.  I almost always recommend cast iron for any kind of griddle cakes, but this soft, sticky batter worked much better on a non-stick surface.  

Scoop 1/3 cup batter onto the griddle and use the bottom of the scoop to spread it out in a spiral pattern into a pancake.

Cover the pan and cook until golden on the bottom, about 5 minutes, and flip the pancake.

Drain the latkes on paper towels and keep them warm. 

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