When your collard greens are young, tender and oh-so-sweet, a quick sauté with leeks, garlic and red pepper flakes is all you need–well, that and a piece of grilled whole wheat sourdough slathered in fresh ricotta cheese. This is spring eating at its finest.
The weather this weekend has been nothing short of glorious. After a long, hard winter, New Yorkers are eager for sundresses and sandals, outdoor drinking, and fresh vegetables. Alas, yesterday’s farmers’ market foray yielded less greenery than I had hoped. I did manage to pick up a couple bunches of small, tender collard greens and a clamshell of spring onion shoots.
The rest of Saturday was spent drinking Bloody Marys, craft beer and some ill-advised whiskey in a series of Brooklyn backyards. We capped the day off with a couple of hours of dancing to 60s soul tunes.
I awoke early this morning with a distinct craving for fried pork dumplings, perhaps with a moo shu chaser. But this didn’t seem like the best way to regain my health after a weekend of possibly excessive imbibing. And so I set about crafting a healthier dish that would take advantage of my farmers’ market bounty and satisfy my salt and spice craving.
Garlic-Ginger Tofu & Collards
Combine the first eight ingredients in a shallow bowl. Add the tofu and stir gently to coat. (In a perfect world, you would have done this before you were ravenous so that the tofu had plenty of time to soak up the marinade, but my lunch was still pretty tasty.) Bring the oil up to medium heat in a large skillet. Lay the tofu pieces in, cooking them in two batches if necessary so as not to crowd the pan. Let the tofu cook undisturbed until nicely browned, rotate the pieces and continue to cook until they are firm and mostly browned. Lay the tofu pieces on a paper towel to drain and add your collards to the skillet along with the remaining tofu marinade. Cook until the collards are wilted and most of the liquid has boiled off. Stir in the onion shoots or scallions and remove from the heat.
Rice would be the obvious accompaniment, but I went with quinoa cooked with chicken stock and satueed leeks. It was good. The leftovers should make for a bright spot in tomorrow’s workday.
I’ve lost track of how much snow has fallen on New York City this winter. This morning’s commute was a sloppy one–and we’re supposed to be getting two more rounds before the week is through. My office has been a comedy of errors since the new year. Today an air conditioning hose burst while workers sanded the outer wall, creating a dusty haze that found me grabbing for my inhaler and sending everyone home early. And so, three hours after arriving at the office, I was slogging back through the slush.
I took a different route than usual so that I could swing by Whole Foods to pick up a large can of olive oil. Dreading the wet subway ride home, I roamed the aisles for a bit. The guy behind the fish counter was fervently pushing the wild Alaskan sockeye, which was on sale. My craving was so instantaneous and intense that I have to believe I’m suffering from some sort of deficiency.
I haven’t been eating much fish as of late, in part because last semester’s foray into the world of collapsing fisheries left me a bit freaked. But a quick check of Seafood Watch confirmed that wild sockeye is one of the better choices. I arrived home an hour later, popped the fish into the fridge, changed into pajamas, and spent the afternoon emailing and editing while the snow continued to fall.
By 6:00 I was ready for dinner. I had lots of root vegetables from my CSA share and some collard greens that were already looking a little sad when I bought them a week and half ago. Some of the larger outer leaves seemed salvageable. Wild salmon is much leaner than farmed, containing about half the fat but roughly the same amount of protein. I’ve found that it dries out quickly as a result, so I hatched the notion of wrapping the fish in collards to hold the moisture in during cooking.
Collard-Wrapped Salmon with Winter Roots
This recipe makes enough for two hungry people, so scale up or down accordingly. You could easily swap in different vegetables–leeks, fennel, potatoes, carrots, etc.–based on what you have on hand.
I am neither a South Carolinian nor a vegan.
Monday morning I received an email from an acquaintance who had accidentally purchased an eighth of a cow and was looking for people to split it with given her limited freezer space. The cow in question came from Grimaldi Farms, a grass-fed, free-range, organic farm in the Hudson Valley. How could I say no?
Seven hours later, Marissa and I met up for a drink and a cash-for-cow exchange. My $50 bought me a whole lot of meat. Three pounds of ground beef and a giant hunk of bone went into the freezer for a future use. Last night I tried my hand at beef liver–a dish I’d never actually eaten before. I soaked the liver in milk and pan-fried it with a light dusting of flour mixed with salt and pepper. Oumar and I ate it with a red onion jam, arugula in a lemon dressing and pillowy egg tagliardi with a pan sauce that included butter, garlic, shiitake mushrooms, parsley and lemon zest.
This was good stuff, to be sure. But a rich, restaurant-style dinner (and, possibly, the after-dinner bourbon) took its toll. I have 24 hours to regain my strength. My cow share also included half of a five-pound top round roast. Rather than divvy it up, we decided to have dinner together. Tomorrow night Maureen, Kevin, Sara and I will be tucking into pot roast.
So tonight it’s a lowcountry vegan meal for me.
Grits with Shiitake-Seitan Gravy and Braised Collards
This recipe makes enough for two people. I just polished off half of it to steel myself for tonight’s birthday party. Given that the festivities are at a dive bar walking distance from my house, I imagine the second half will make an excellent breakfast.
As any regular reader will have intuited, I have a deep and abiding affection for leafy greens–the darker, the better. The winter months can be rough for green lovers who live in northern climates, but hearty collard greens seem to fare well. They also hold up nicely in the refrigerator, unlike some of their more delicate relations.
Collards are a traditional New Year’s food throughout the American South. I rang in the new year with good friends and cuddly cats in Baltimore.
The 20 or so guests were no match for the truly insane variety of taco fixings that were on offer. Homemade corn tortillas swaddled red chicken mole, grilled gulf shrimp, carnitas, chorizo, mushroom and corn rajas, pickled cow’s tongue, refried beans, Coca-Cola braised beef, and black mole goat (not pictured, because it was simmering away in the crockpot). There was a whole other table of salsas, cheese, veggies and the like.
New Year’s Day found us watching a trashy movie while dining on stuffed ham, black-eyed peas, and collard greens braised in coconut milk with some black cardamom I’d picked up at Union Market while passing through Washington, DC. I used this recipe from Serious Eats as a starting point for what turned out to be a damn tasty variation on a classic dish.
It is January 5th and I’m on a bit of a collard bender. Thursday morning, I poached an egg in some of the leftover greens before hopping a train back to NYC just ahead of a snowstorm. Friday I bundled up to check out the winter wonderland and get some more greens, which I sautéed with soy sausage. Yesterday I ate the collards braised with roasted delicata squash and red onion.
This morning I went with a hash that requires just one skillet and feeds one individual who stayed out a little too late, drank a little too much red wine, and spent more than she had intended in the live auction. (Luckily the proceeds benefit Just Food, an amazing organization that connects New Yorkers to fresh, locally grown food.)
Sweet Potato and Collard Hash
I am still working my way through the last of this season’s CSA share. Olive oil, habanero powder, salt and pepper are the only things in this dairy-free bisque that didn’t come directly from Windflower Farm or a nearby meat purveyor. This came out crazy tasty, which is a good thing since I will be eating it all week.
Sweet Potato Turkey Bisque with Collards
I put the finishing touches on my first grad school research paper a little after 1:00am on December 20th, sacked out for five hours, worked a full day, and then attended my final class. I arrived home around 9:00pm, stuffed some food into my mouth and some clothes into a suitcase, and hit the road for the twelve-hour drive to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Needless to say, I was not in great shape by the time we arrived. I spent the first couple of days mentally and physically recovering.
When I came to, I found myself in a lovely house nestled in the Smoky Mountains, surrounded by good friends who’d driven in from Nashville and from Athens, Georgia. There were two wood-burning fireplaces, a pool table, a (kinda) hot tub, and plenty of booze. I was the first person up each morning and spent the earliest hours of my day under a blanket on the couch in front of a picture window. I alternated between indulging in a juicy novel and watching the mountains disappear and reappear though the mist.
On December 23rd, we hit Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s amusement park in Pigeon Forge. I don’t go in much for heroes, but Dolly certainly is one of mine and I have wanted to visit Dollywood ever since I learned of its existence.
We managed to hit all four of the excellent roller coasters, twice. My favorite was the Wild Eagle, a triumph of engineering in which you are hanging in a seat with nothing above or below. After a delightfully unnerving initial drop, the sensation is one of soaring. Our fear was replaced by a feeling of weightlessness that left us giddy.
The Chasing Rainbows Museum offered a staggering array of photos of Dolly with celebrities (Grace Jones being my personal favorite), a look back at her childhood and early years in Nashville, and an impressive collection of fan art.
Downstairs were case upon case of clothing from Dolly’s movies and tours. My closet suddenly seems so drab.
We also got to check out Dolly’s tour bus and one of her (in)famous wigs.
The quirky guy leading the tour got a shot of our whole group.
Our day at Dollywood concluded with a Christmas-themed light parade led by a zealous woman with a banjo.
The next day was Christmas Eve, our last night in Gatlinburg. After taking stock of our food reserves, I headed out do some final grocery shopping. (Miraculously, the booze supply had held.) I knew that I wanted to use the dried black-eyed peas that our Nashville friends had brought, so I was thinking Tex-Mex as I walked into the local Food City. But one look at the freestanding cooler full of collard greens and I had a new plan. These greens were glorious–and huge; one bunch would be plenty to feed all six of us. A few aisles later, I stumbled on a shockingly large display of smoked hog jowl. This store and I were clearly on the same wavelength.
The nice young man who checked me out took one look at my cart and said, “You’re a little early, aren’t you?” For those that don’t know, collards and black-eyed peas are both traditional New Year’s foods in the Southern United States. The peas offer luck and the greens symbolize wealth. Black-eyed peas, which are generally served with rice in a dish called Hoppin’ John, came over with West African slaves. Collard greens, which were considered weeds by many plantation owners, were a mainstay of the slave diet. The hog jowl and other less desirable cuts would have been more readily accessible to the slaves. This combination of ingredients is cheap, easy to cook, and can simmer away untended.
My version is a bit fancified, to be sure, but its spirit is true–as its ability to heal after a night of over imbibing.
New Year’s Day Stew
the drunken fig 