Like many of my fellow southerners, and many of my fellow Indians, I love black-eyed peas. My mom seemed to know dozens of ways to prepare them, and the variation kept us satisfied; looking back, I now realise that it also probably helped her stave off boredom in the kitchen. She served these griddle cakes for breakfast or as a quick afternoon snack. After the peas soak, the batter is simple to prepare and the cakes cook very quickly.
I used to think that soaking, grinding and deep-frying or griddle-frying black-eyed peas was a uniquely Gujarati thing, until I realised that the west African pea fritters called accara use much the same technique. Black-eyed peas migrated east and west from their west African origins, to the Indian subcontinent and to the Americas. Their myriad preparations – distinct, but showing threads of kinship – offer ties that bind diverse cultures.
