Vegetarian New Year’s: Haluska and Black-Eyed Peas

First published 8 January 2010 · revised and expanded 30 October 2026.

Cabbage and noodles fried in plenty of ghee, spiced black-eyed peas, and sour cream on the side.

Here is a super popular, quick and easy, New Year’s Day/Dal meal. It actually has been voted in as a weekly Saturday winter dinner at my place, because it is so good. It takes 20 minutes from top to bottom, and costs perhaps $5 for 4–6 servings.

Basically, we’re matching up haluska, an Eastern European staple, especially on New Year’s, with a side of spiced black-eyed peas, popular in the American South on that same day. They go great together, and your grandma may be proud.

Time

20 minutes, top to bottom

Cost

about $5 for 4–6 (2010 prices)

Season

winter

Tastes

all six

What you need

Method

1. 1 Boil the noodles

   Bring 2 quarts of salted water to a rapid boil. Add only the noodles. Boil for 5 minutes uncovered. Strain. Set aside.

2. 2 Sauté the cabbage and onion

   Chop the cabbage and onion into little strips. Sauté in the oil or ghee on medium, stirring frequently. You want the onions to get translucent and perhaps caramelized a bit.

3. 3 Season

   Add 1 tsp of good (like Celtic) sea salt and ½ tsp of freshly ground black pepper.

4. 4 Add the noodles

   Add the noodles and stir thoroughly.

5. 5 Heat and spice the black-eyed peas

   Open 2 cans of organic black-eyed peas. :) Heat. Add 1 tsp of dried basil and ½ tsp of bay leaf powder. Stir well.

   Hey, it’s the holidays. I think it’s OK to take this time-saving step, but if you want to avoid the can, even though you can get them lined, by all means soak some dried peas the night before, and boil for 1–2 hours in salted water to go the real old-fashioned route.

6. 6 Serve

   Serve the haluska and black-eyed peas together, with organic sour cream ready to mix on the side, which is quite essential!

The high-quality spices are of course what give this meal great prāṇa, precious always, but especially while shivering and hunkering in the cold season.

The six tastes

• Madhura

  Sweet

  earth + water

  oil, ghee, noodles, basil, bay leaf, peas

• Amla

  Sour

  earth + fire

  pepper, cabbage, sour cream

• Lavaṇa

  Salty

  water + fire

  salt

• Kaṭu

  Pungent

  fire + air

  pepper, bay leaf, onion

• Tikta

  Bitter

  space + air

  cabbage, basil, bay leaf, peas

• Kaṣāya

  Astringent

  earth + air

  cabbage, onion, peas

A meal for the cold season

Quoted from my translation of Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayam.¹

Why all that ghee

In Hemanta, the strong digestive fire (anala), due to the obstruction by cold, becomes powerful. If it has little fuel, stimulated by vāyu, it will consume the dhātus. Therefore, in this cold season, one should consume sweet, sour, and salty tastes.

Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayam, Sū. 3.7–8

The winter fire needs fuel, which is the classical case for four tablespoons of ghee. Vāgbhaṭa’s winter menu even includes “auspicious preparations made from wheat flour” and oil (Sū. 3.12–13), so noodles tossed with cabbage fried in ghee are in season.

Black-eyed peas · rājamāṣa

Black-eyed peas are a kind of cowpea, a plant domesticated in Africa and grown in India since prehistoric times.² My translation renders Vāgbhaṭa’s rājamāṣa as cowpea, and his verdict on it is frank:

Rājamāṣa (cowpea) causes anila (vāta), is dry, produces much feces, and is heavy.

Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayam, Sū. 6.19

Heavy and dry, the peas are well matched by the spices and by the ghee-rich haluska beside them. Basil’s Indian cousin surasa (holy basil) “alleviates hiccup, cough, poison, dyspnea, and pain in the sides, and destroys foul odor” (Sū. 6.108); black pepper “alleviates kapha, and is light” (Sū. 6.161). The bay leaf in a Western spice jar is bay laurel; the patra of Vāgbhaṭa’s “three aromatics” is the Indian bay leaf, a cinnamon leaf, and he calls that trio “sharp, hot, dry, appetizing, and digestive stimulant” (Sū. 6.160).

The New Year’s tradition is the American South’s: eating black-eyed peas, often as Hoppin’ John, on New Year’s Day “is thought to bring prosperity in the new year.”²

Noodles, salt, onion

Wheat “is an aphrodisiac (vṛṣya), cooling (śīta), heavy (guru), unctuous (snigdha), life-giving (jīvana), and alleviates vāta and pitta” (Sū. 6.15). Sea salt “is sweet in vipāka (post-digestive taste), heavy, and increases śleṣman (kapha)” (Sū. 6.147), and salt is one of the three tastes for the cold season (Sū. 3.8). The onion “has fewer qualities than garlic, increases kapha, and does not excessively increase pitta” (Sū. 6.112).

The sour cream

Sour cream is cultured cream, close kin to Vāgbhaṭa’s curd (dadhi), which is “heavy … and hot” and “conquers vāta” (Sū. 5.29), a good match for the peas. His rules for curd are strict: “One should never eat it at night, nor when it is hot. One should not eat it in spring, summer, or autumn” (Sū. 5.31). Winter is among the seasons curd is allowed, with conditions: not “without mung bean soup, nor without honey, nor without ghee and sugar candy. Nor without āmalaka (Indian gooseberry), nor constantly” (Sū. 5.32). By the letter of these rules, the sour cream belongs at a midday meal.

Curious about another ingredient? Ask Vāgbhaṭa answers from the same translation, with the verses quoted.

Sources

1. Vāgbhaṭa, Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayam, in Vāgbhaṭa’s Aṣṭāṅgahṛdayam: A Full English Translation, tr. Renay Oshop (2026). Loci quoted: Sūtrasthāna 3.7–8, 3.12–13; 5.29, 5.31–32; 6.15, 6.19, 6.108, 6.112, 6.147, 6.160–161. Paperback pp. 6, 13, 17, 23, 25–26 (root text). In short quotations the translation’s parenthetical glosses are sometimes omitted.
2. “Black-eyed pea,” Wikipedia, accessed 30 October 2026.

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