Feijão-Fradinho Salad with Grilled Coalho

What it is

Black-eyed peas, straight from the bag into the pressure cooker for ten minutes, rinsed cold and folded into a vinagrete of tomato, red onion, yellow pepper and coriander, dressed with olive oil, lime and wine vinegar. On top, slabs of queijo coalho seared golden in a hot pan. This is Protein Champion number two, and it's lunch.

English calls them peas, USDA files them as cowpeas, and Brazil calls them feijão-fradinho, a bean. Whatever the label, this seed has a famous job: IPHAN, Brazil's national heritage institute, describes acarajé as a fritter of feijão-fradinho fried in dendê, and the craft of the baianas de acarajé is registered as Cultural Heritage of Brazil. Panelinha points to a quieter talent: fradinho gives off little broth, so it sits neatly in a salad. Its vinagrete de feijão-fradinho, filed under Bahian and vegetarian, is where this plate starts.

Then the coalho, the most typical artisanal cheese of Brazil's Northeast, known for standing up to heat. A small joke at a vegetarian's expense: coalho is the Portuguese word for rennet. Brazil's rules let this cheese be set 'by rennet or other appropriate coagulant enzymes' (my translation), so both kinds are legal and the label is worth reading. If it only says 'coalho', ask the maker. I'm lacto-vegetarian, so mine is the non-animal kind.

Why you should eat it

The short version, before anyone files this under side salad. USDA FoodData Central lists 7.73 g of protein and 6.5 g of fiber per 100 g of cooked black-eyed peas, so one cup of them (171 g) brings about 13.2 g of protein and 11.1 g of fiber. Protein and fiber, riding in the same spoon. That same 100 g carries 116 kcal, 20.8 g of carbohydrate, about half a gram of fat (0.53 g) and 4 mg of sodium, cooked without salt. Most of the plate's saturated fat comes from the coalho, and a good share of its sodium too: USDA has no coalho record, and its closest match, queso asadero, lists 25 g of fat, 14.8 g of it saturated, and 607 mg of sodium per 100 g. So the cheese gets 50 g a plate, a topping with a job, and it brings protein of its own. The cholesterol and gas stories, small print included, are waiting below while the pot hisses.

Tips

• No soak, so no forgetting to soak. Black-eyed peas go straight from the bag to the pot (Nebraska Extension), which makes them the weeknight member of the bean family.
• The cold rinse after draining is Panelinha's step to stop the cooking. Skip it and the peas keep softening in their own heat.
• Coalho is known for standing up to heat and is usually grilled (Penna and colleagues), so give it a hot pan and leave it alone. Flip too early and the golden crust stays in the pan.
• Beans and your gut have a complicated past? Go easy on yourself and on the portion: start with half a plate, as the authors in case four suggest smaller servings, and build up.
• Make the salad on Sunday and it covers lunches into the week (see Storage). Grill the coalho fresh each day: five minutes, and hot cheese is the whole point.

Substitutions

• Dried black-eyed peas: About 740 g (4 1/4 cups) of tinned black-eyed peas, drained and rinsed, my estimate of what 250 g dried gives once cooked Skip the pressure cooker and go straight to the dressing, like the tinned peas in cases three and four. The card is built on dried peas, so it won't match; check the labels for added salt.
• Pressure cooker: A regular pot: peas covered with plenty of fresh water, simmered gently until a pea is soft but holds its shape Same card, a longer wait. No source here gives a stovetop time for black-eyed peas; my estimate is to start tasting at 40 minutes and allow up to an hour.
• Queijo coalho: Another cheese sold for grilling or frying, such as halloumi, made with non-animal rennet (check the label), or none at all The card is built on a stand-in record for coalho, so another cheese won't match it. Leaving it off takes about 11 g of protein off each plate (50 g at 22.6 g per 100 g on that record), and most of the saturated fat with it.
• Coriander: Flat-leaf parsley, if coriander isn't your herb Panelinha uses coriander; the swap is mine. At 8 g, the card barely moves.

Storage

The peas: shallow containers in the fridge, eaten within 3 to 4 days, and anything you want to freeze goes in within 4 days (Nebraska Extension, for cooked beans). Once the fresh tomato is in, I'd aim for the early end of that, and I'd freeze the peas plain. The coalho stays in the fridge until it meets the pan.

While it cooks: the shortest link

Lid locked, timer running, nine quiet minutes. Lean on the counter.

Last time, rice and beans swapped lunches: the beans lent lysine, and the rice lent a bigger share of the sulfur pair, methionine and cysteine. Today there's no rice on the plate. So, fair question: how does a black-eyed pea do on its own?

The internet loves to mark plant protein with a red pen and no answer key. Here's the answer key. FAO, the UN's food and agriculture agency, publishes how much of each of the nine essential amino acids, the ones your body can't make, should sit in every gram of protein. For older children, teenagers and adults that includes 48 mg of lysine and 23 mg of the sulfur pair. A protein is scored by whichever one falls shortest.

Now the peas. By my arithmetic from USDA FoodData Central's record for cooked black-eyed peas, lysine sits at 67.7 mg per gram of protein, 141% of FAO's number. The sulfur pair is the shortest of the nine, at 25.2 mg, and it still reaches 110%. All nine clear the bar.

Here's the picture I'd draw for a class: a paper chain, the kind kids make for a party, with links in nine colors. Pull on it and it gives way at its thinnest link. In this pea, the thinnest link is the sulfur pair, and it holds.

The picture stops in two places. First, that's composition: the amino acids sitting in the food, before digestion takes its cut. How much your body absorbs is a separate measurement, and no source here made it for black-eyed peas in people. Second, nobody eats a single chain. On USDA's nearest record to coalho, the cheese carries 30.8 mg of the sulfur pair per gram of protein, so peas and cheese together come out around 27.7 (my arithmetic, on a stand-in cheese). And the rest of your day counts: Mariotti and Gardner, the reviewers from Protein Champion number one, found no evidence yet that plant proteins need a partner in the same meal. Rice at dinner, at 43.9 mg per gram of its protein (USDA), still joins the team.

So, in one line: the sulfur pair is the black-eyed pea's shortest link, it still clears FAO's bar on paper, and the cheese and the rest of your day add more links.

Case one: the cowpea table in Benin

In southern Benin, cowpeas are everyday food, and a research team set out to measure how everyday. They surveyed 1,217 adults aged 19 to 65, one per household, chosen at random: 641 in the city of Cotonou and 576 in two rural areas. Each said which cowpea dishes they'd eaten in the past week, how often and how much, picking portions from a photo atlas. The team also bought nine traditional dishes from 27 street vendors and analysed them in the lab.

Almost everyone, 98%, usually eats cowpea dishes, on average about once a day: the equivalent of 71 g of cowpea seed per adult per day in Cotonou, 58 g in the countryside. Run through the lab numbers, those dishes covered on average 42% of the recommended daily fiber, 37% of magnesium, 30% of folate, 26% of protein and 15% of energy. About half the people reached the EAT-Lancet target of at least 50 g of pulses a day from cowpea alone. The fat lived in the fried doughnuts, up to 33.3 g per 100 g.

For your plate: where cowpeas are a daily habit, they carry a real share of the day's fiber and protein.

Where it stops: a snapshot of what people said they ate, multiplied by measured dishes, with no health outcome tracked. The authors warn that food questionnaires can miss both ways and that dishes varied between vendors. The French National Research Agency funded it, and the authors declare no conflict of interest. A good map of a cowpea culture, with no promise about your health.

Case two: cowpea protein against casein in Teresina

Teresina, Piauí, 2010. Researchers recruited men aged 30 to 70 and women past menopause aged 45 to 70 with moderately high LDL cholesterol, 160 to 190 mg/dL. Of 44 who started, 38 finished, 32 of them women, average age 57. In random order, they spent six weeks on each of two shakes, two a day carrying 25 g of protein between them: one made with protein isolated from cowpeas, the other with casein, a milk protein. A four-week break sat between the two. Nobody knew which shake was which.

On cowpea, LDL went from 174.9 to 141.9 mg/dL, down 18.9%. On casein, from 174.5 to 165.0, down 4.5%. Set against casein, cowpea protein took LDL down a further 23.53 mg/dL (14.4%) and apoB, another blood-fat marker doctors watch, down 11.7%. Triglycerides, inflammation markers and body weight didn't move. Flatulence: 4 people on cowpea, 3 on casein, and nobody quit over it.

For your plate: this was the pea's protein pulled out and put in a shake. By my arithmetic from USDA's record, 25 g of it is about 323 g of cooked black-eyed peas, nearly two cups. The peas on one plate carry about 14.7 g of it (my arithmetic).

Where it stops: the authors call it a proof of concept and ask for longer trials at different doses. It was small, mostly women, all with moderately high LDL. Two companies helped make the product; two of the authors held public research fellowships, and all declare no conflict of interest. If you're managing cholesterol, take this to your doctor. A recipe can't make that call for you.

Case three: half a cup of whole peas for eight weeks

Mesa, Arizona. Sixteen adults aged 22 to 65 finished this one, 7 men and 9 women, all mildly insulin resistant, none with diabetes or heart disease. In random order, each spent eight weeks on half a cup a day of canned pinto beans, eight on canned black-eyed peas and eight on canned carrots as the comparison, with two-week breaks between.

The pintos did the heavy lifting: LDL down 14 mg/dL, total cholesterol down 19. The black-eyed peas didn't follow. LDL went from 129 to 132 mg/dL, about as flat as on the carrots. HDL, triglycerides, blood sugar and insulin held still on all three. The authors noticed their black-eyed peas carried less than half the pintos' fiber, 2.9 g against 5.4 g per half cup, and wondered whether a full cup a day might do more, if fiber is the driver.

For your plate, the honest line across cases two and three: the pea's protein moved LDL in one Brazilian trial, and half a cup of whole peas didn't in one small US trial. A plate here holds about 1.1 cups (my estimate), between the two and tested by nobody.

Where it stops: 16 people, intake self-reported, and the authors suspect the long trial wore some of them out. The Beans for Health Alliance paid for it with USAID support, and Archer Daniels Midland supplied and analysed the beans. I read it from a copy on the US Dry Bean Council's website and found no conflict-of-interest statement. Small and industry-backed, and it still reported the result that didn't flatter the peas.

Case four: the gas question

Two of case three's researchers, a second paper. Every week, people in three bean feeding trials filled in a questionnaire on gas, bloating and stool changes. The black-eyed pea arm is case three's trial, with 17 people in this paper's tables.

In week one, 19% of the black-eyed pea eaters (3 people) reported more gas, against 50% on pinto beans, 47% on vegetarian baked beans and 3% on the carrots. By week two it was 12%, and from week three on, one or two people. Across eight weeks, 14 of the 17 reported no more than one gut complaint. Of everyone who noticed more gas, 70% or more said it faded by the second or third week. And 3% to 11% reported more gas even on control foods with nothing gassy in them.

For your plate: of the three beans tested, black-eyed peas drew the fewest gas reports in week one, and those faded. The authors' advice for a nervous gut: smaller portions, or a serving split in two.

Where it stops: this is what people felt, not gas anyone measured, and expectation shapes reports; the authors cite an experiment where a labelled placebo produced symptoms on its own. It's 17 people on canned peas, mostly white US adults. The paper doesn't say who paid for it, and the authors declare no competing interests. Their read: worries about beans and gas may be exaggerated, and it varies by bean and by person.