Farm to Table: Collards & Yellow Potatoes
Tonight I raced home from Spells to cook dinner before our touring Broadway show, Mary Poppins. I quickly cleaned and split the yellow potatoes of indeterminate variety before tossing them with some olive oil, sliced red onions, kosher salt, pepper, and rosemary. I roasted them in our convection toaster oven at 425° for 40 minutes, turning them once, and they turned out quite well, though the red onions were pretty much burned to a crisp. Next time, maybe I’ll try some garlic instead, as it might hold up better at that temp.
With the potatoes cooking, I cleaned and de-stemed the collard greens we received in last week’s farm share box while feeling closer to my true Southern heritage. As a child growing up in the South, I had overcooked, mushy collard greens as a side dish in my school lunch at least biweekly, which is not to say that I actually ate them. (To be honest, I didn’t eat much of my school lunches back then, which is probably why I was so scrawny.) With the bad memories of these over-boiled monstrosities, I was looking for a recipe that wasn’t stewed—I figured a crispier collard might help me overcome my childhood trauma. With that in mind, I departed from my usual Cooking Light crutch and chose a Real Simple recipe for Sauteed Collard Greens instead (though both magazine recipe archives are compiled on the MyRecipes website, so it’s not like I was going completely out of my wheelhouse).
I have to say, after the 5-second prep of the baby bok choy yesterday, these collard greens seemed like a real chore, though they really weren’t that bad to prepare in the grand scheme of things. After boiling the slices of collards for 10 minutes, I sauteed them with about 5 cloves of sliced garlic. The boiling tenderized these tough leaves a bit, but still left them with a slight crisp, while the sauteing gave them a taste profile reminiscent of Italian spinach (yes, that’s a good thing). Next time, I might add extra garlic and some of that southern staple, the pig, either in bacon or pancetta form. I’m not sure any self-respecting Southerner would serve collard greens without the pork.
Overall, a great meal that used up pretty much all of the remaining produce from this week’s box, just in time for tomorrow’s harvest. Wonder what I’ll get then?