BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

John H[_2_]

On Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:37:48 -0500, wrote:

On Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:49:41 -0500, John H
wrote:

We're having smoked salmon with chipotle cream sauce tonight. Needed something good to go with the
fish. Settled on red beans and rice and collard greens. My wife won't have any of the collards,
which is fine with me. She does love the red beans and rice though.

Anyway, now that y'all are salivating, here's the recipe for the collards:

Collard Greens

Grocery store bag full of Collards
Large onion
4-5 cloves garlic
5 slices bacon
1 tablespoon sugar
1/8 cup Balsamic vinegar
½ tsp red pepper flakes (or something hot) (Franks Red Hot works well also)

Wash and de-stem collards (don't worry about small stems).

Roll collard leaves and cut rolls about 1" wide. Boil about a cup of water in a pot and put all the
greens in the pot with the boiling water. Cover and let cook for about 12 minutes. Drain.

In the pot, fry the bacon after cutting into 1" pieces. Slice the onions and saute' them with the
bacon. Don't let get done, as it will cook in the collards.

Chop garlic, add to balsamic vinegar, sugar, and hot pepper. Put collards back in pot and add the
ingredients, onions, etc. Stir, being sure to get the bacon pieces and fat mixed in well. Cover and
simmer for about one hour. Add a little water if necessary.

Country (or SE DC) collards
From the big black lady that lived behind me in Anacostia

Perhaps updated a little

2568.8 in reply to 2568.7
Hog Jowls, onion, mushrooms and beef broth.

Cut the fatty part off of both sides of the hog jowl (saving that
meaty part in the middle) and put it rind down in the pan. Burn it.
Chop up a large onion or two and put them in there, burn them too.
Throw in a can of mushroom pieces. The fat will cook out of the rind
and prevent it from actually burning but you want everything browned.
You can flip over the hog jowls and burn the other side a while too.
Meanwhile dice up the meat part and toss that in. You can pull out the
fat parts then and throw it away. You have a lot of the flavor in the
pan and the onion/mushroom mix.
Crunch a couple cloves of garlic and toss them in along with some salt
and a few grinds of black pepper.
Keep cooking this on high heat while tossing it around until the meat
is well browned.

At this point I splash in a shot or two of bourbon to deglaze the pan
and make a sort of gravy out of all of that brown stuff. Stir that up
with a spatula being sure you get everything off the bottom of the
pan. (cheap white wine works too)

As soon as you see this start to cook down, toss in a can of beef
broth, a can of water and a bag of greens, Cover and bring to a boil,
then reduce heat and simmer a couple hours. The greens will collapse
into the broth pretty fast. You can stir them up to make that go
faster.

They are really better if you put them in the fridge and heat them up
again tomorrow. It seems to take the sharpness out of the greens.

Well...I've never seen hog jowls at our local stores, so that's probably out. I substitute the bacon
to get the fat. And, after cooking the greens down the first time, and draining them, there seems to
be enough water left in them to cook, albeit slowly, for another hour or so. Never tried the beef
broth, but I wouldn't use more than a half cup or so.

You're right about letting them set. I usually make a batch witch will last about four big servings.
That last bowlful is always the best.