Crispy Collards

This was a serendipitous cooking goof: I microwaved some leftover collard greens because I wanted them to get a little more tender. I am here to tell you that three minutes (I thought I had it set on low power, but our display has gone blank, and we just guess) is way too long. They turned into little fluffy, crispy flakes, kind of like seaweed. They still had excellent collard flavor, somewhat concentrated, and were fun to eat. They would make a great finger food or condiment. I cannot see the packaged-food industry getting this right, though. I don't expect to receive a little packet of collard crisps in my next box lunch.

New Year's Food

I guess this post is for both of us, Mom, since you called me from Texas last night to talk about cooking black eyed peas and will be nowhere near a computer for another week. I hope your black eyed peas with chorizo were perfect. My hoppin' John was tasty, but the rice didn't cook properly -- some of it was a little gummy, some undercooked. I have some work to do to become a perfect Carolina pilau chef.

Fortunately, the collards were glorious. And I ate plenty of both collards and hoppin' John, so in the New Year I will be both rich and lucky.

We also had homemade chocolate ice cream. It was delicious, but honestly a bit too intense and rich. Next time I will look for a more moderate chocolate ice cream recipe -- fewer egg yolks, less chocolate.

Happy New Year!

I Promise I Will Shut Up About Collards After This

I wrote the Entertaining page again this month for Abode, the special home section that appears in this week's Free Times. Once again, it's not online, but if you're in Columbia, South Carolina, you should pick one up.

The main article is about collard greens. The auxiliary articles are about 1960s desserts and decompressing from holiday entertaining.

Slow Collards

It occurs to me that you might not yet have cooked collards the really long, slow, traditional way, Mom. The collards Dad has started growing are so tender, and our family isn't much for cooking vegetables for half a day. And besides, I didn't want to scare you the first few times I made collard greens for you, because Southern food was so foreign to us. But I think you should try it. I took a bunch of pictures on Sunday, so here's a pictorial guide.

I weighed the bunch of collards I bought before I left the store: 3.5 pounds. It was a large, compact bunch, and probably yielded 8 side-dish-sized servings.

I have made greens that were really tasty but totally ruined by gritty dirt. So you have to do exactly what all the recipes say: fill a sink or a giant bowl (or a cooler, as I discovered at Thanksgiving) with water, swish the greens around, and let them sit there for 10 or more minutes until the dirt has fallen to the bottom. Change the water once or twice. Collards seem less dirty in general than turnip and mustard greens, which you should wash even more thoroughly.

Don't dry the collards at all -- you're just going to add more water. Take several leaves at a time, roll or bunch them up a bit, and cut crosswise, across the stem. I don't discard much of the stalk -- only the thickest bit at the base. It all gets very tender and tasty, so why waste it?

You will need some kind of cured pork product. I probably wouldn't have chosen the chemical wonderland pictured here, but Lawson was good enough to do our Thanksgiving shopping and decided we needed 10 pounds of artificially flavored pork neckbones, so I will not complain. Ham hocks work well, too. Probably roasted pork bones of any sort would also be okay.

A closeup, perhaps?

I don't know what that is, either. I poked it, and it was flexible.

Next, get a big pot. The bigger it is, the less time you have to spend waiting for the collards to cook down so you can stuff more in the pot. You will probably still have to spend a while doing so...maybe 15 extremely unstrenuous minutes.

Turn the heat on to medium-high and put the pork in the pot. Begin adding collards.

This is still just the one bunch I started with. It took about 10 minutes to get it all in. I used this strangely shaped wooden spoon thing that Lawson picked up at a yard sale to stir and prod.

Once all the collards are in, add water to bring the level up to 4 or 5 inches. Some recipes call for more...according to a family cookbook, Lawson's aunt covered hers entirely with water which she then discarded (sacrilege!) but this is a good start. You may need to add more later. Slow collards should end up with plenty of what is usually called potlikker, a greenish vitaminy broth that is, for me, almost the entire point of slow collards.

Then simmer the whole thing, lid slightly vented, for 3 to 6 hours, stirring maybe every 30 minutes. The pork should cook down and the greens become first darker green then less green. Add more water if needed.

Here are the collards after about two hours. They've reduced but are still darker green and not yet completely tender. These took another hour and a half.

When they're finished cooking, salt the collards to taste -- you shouldn't need much if the pork was cured. Then add a few teaspoons or more of hot pepper vinegar. Ideally you have a jar of pickled chiles of some sort and can just use some of the juice. If not, maybe cider vinegar and Texas Pete?

And here they are, all finished and delicious, with plenty of potlikker and a little of the meat that fell off the neckbone. Do not be dubious, even if you prefer vegetables that aren't overcooked...these are a special case. Lawson eats them cold out of the refrigerator for dessert -- they're that good.

Southern Italy and the Southern US

On Sunday I made:

• Tuscan Baked Cannellini Beans with Rosemary and Garlic. The recipe came from the Jack Bishop Italian Vegetarian book you gave me for my birthday. It was awesome, although next time I will probably use the crockpot instead of the prescribed Dutch-oven-in-the-oven, because I would like my beans a little bit moister.


• Fennel and Orange Salad with Mint and Olives, also from the Bishop book. The taste was phenomenal, but I didn't like the size and shape of the orange and fennel pieces as dictated by the recipe -- the oranges were in big rounds, beautiful but hard to handle, and the fennel was in weird chunks.


• Piadina, a Roman flatbread I have probably mentioned before.
  


• Collards cooked for five hours with some smoked pork neckbones.

I liked the way the collards fit right in with the three Italian dishes. A very balanced meal, all in all.

More on collards very soon...

Planned Side Dishes

It's important to plan over a healthy breakfast.

Lawson and I are assigned the side dishes for his big family Thanksgiving again. We are going to be much less ambitious than in years past, so I am feeling pretty good about it all. Here's what we're making:

- Collards, traditional Southern style. This involves a ham hock and several hours of simmering with plenty of water.

- Green beans, traditional Southern style. This involves a smoked turkey neck and several hours of simmering with plenty of water. Are you getting all this?

- Spinach-rice. Because the turkey is smoked, it isn't stuffed, and every year Lawson pores over stuffing recipes and spends hours making it and nobody eats very much. His stuffing is good, but I don't think it's a stuffing-eating family. So we're going with rice and spinach this year.

- Macaroni and cheese, which I have noted in the past is the weirdest of the traditional Southern Thanksgiving foods. We will be using the absurd Macaroni and Cheese Supreme recipe of the illustrious David Wade, TV chef and object of my scholarly and acquisitional interest. I can't wait. The recipe includes 2 cups of sour cream. It will clog arteries from 8 yards away.

- Cranberry sauce. I adore the extremely tart raw cranberry-orange relish we make every year with the hand-cranked meat grinder, but I'm going to try plain cooked cranberry sauce this year to see how it goes over.

- I may make some gingerbread.

So, all in all, it should be pretty low key. The only bad part is that we have to procure all our groceries tonight, along with the rest of the city.

Collards

This is my favorite way to eat collard greens: cut into strips, with the ribs chopped up small, and sauteed in the fat from one or two pieces of bacon. Garlic and a dried chile are optional. It's halfway in between the traditional ham-hock-and-eighteen-hours recipe and the lighter stir frying in olive oil...both of which I write about in a November piece for the Free Times which will be published the week after Thanksgiving.

Oh, man, I love collards.

Vegetarian Reaction

We had a four-pound pork stew last night in honor of the visiting aunts and uncles. That menu was: Italian Pork Stew; Grandma's scalloped potatoes with tomatoes and onions; Grandma's salad with apples, glazed pecans, and Gorgonzola; freshly baked whole wheat bread; and Kathy brought a rum cake.

The general porkiness of that sort of meal, however delicious, turns me into a vegetarian for several days afterwards. So tonight we had vaguely Persian things, including potato and egg kuku, Dad's collards with olives and lemon, bulgur and walnut pilaf, and tomato/herb relish. Very restorative.

Lighter Fare

We had a nice, reasonable dinner last night instead of stuffing ourselves. I made fresh albacore in an Italian red wine sauce, whole wheat ciabatta with sage and cheese, and Dad’s beautiful collards.

I used a Greek recipe for the greens which involved sautéeing garlic in olive oil; adding the greens and a half cup of Kalamata olives and simmering until tender; and dressing them before serving with the juice of half a lemon. I ended up cooking them about 45 minutes—they were tender sooner, but I was aiming for that wonderful sweetness that long cooking brings to collards.

For dessert we had a little bowl of fresh blackberries and a piece of dark chocolate.

Of course, this “simple” dinner required that someone lovingly plant the collards and cover them every night to keep them from freezing, and to pick and wash them; someone going to the market for fresh fish and berries; and someone being there to tend the bread intermittently throughout the afternoon. It’s great entertainment, though.

Greek Madness

Grandma gave me a Greek cookbook for Christmas and tonight was our second or third all-Greek meal. I have used a quart of olive oil this week.

The menu:

--Pork Stew with Olives, Anchovies, Cilantro, and Red Wine
--Gigantes (Large White Beans--I used large dried limas)
--Salad of Collard Greens (cooked and cooled) dressed with Lemon Juice and topped with Fried Garlic and Chopped Hard-Boiled Egg

Everything was so flavorful, but the collards were something special.

I have made only one New Year's resolution: to eat more vegetables. I want to explore all the ones I haven't tried, and eat more of my favorites, and maybe eat a little less meat and starch in the process.

Above is a picture of Dad's arugula and collard crop.