Eat More Collard Greens!

Eat More Collard Greens!

Some might think it’s strange that a white kid from the Midwest could like collard greens so much, but I do. I have to admit I never tasted them in our childhood home as John and Joy’s bouncing baby boy. As I recall, broccoli was about as wild as we got with vegetables back then. Rather than a fondness for vegetables, we Gunters were some chicken-eating-son-of-a-Gunter’s. 

I remember how Mom would pan fry the equivalent of 10 whole chickens to a golden perfection, and shove it all in a big, brown, paper bag with Matthew’s Super Market printed on the side. There were always a lot more chicken legs than anything else in the bag because they were cheaper to buy. Truthfully, all chicken was cheap back then, and that was important on a police officer’s pay in the sixties, but more importantly, the three little Gunter children liked the legs best of all. Kids that don’t whine about the lack of chicken legs make for a happy mom, as you know. Next, she’d whip up a large batch of popcorn and toss it in another big, brown, paper bag with Matthew’s Super Market written on the side. She’d fold over the tops of both bags, throw three little Gunter kids in our white 1968 Chrysler with three-speed stick-shift on the floor, custom-made plastic seat covers that burnt your bare legs in the summer time as bad as a muffler of a Honda 350 scrambler, shove my blonde-headed dad behind the wheel, and off we would go. Pop would drive us to the drive-in movie where, by flashing his police badge, they would wave us through without charge. 

In we would go past the rows and rows of hang-on-the-window speakers and the playground down in front with it’s beckoning siren song that even the most shy of us would thrill to despite all of its childhood dangers. We would find just the perfect spot in the jungle of cars and speakers. Once settled, we’d begin our feast, set in to collapse about 164 red and white paper straws just trying to drink one 6oz bottle of Coke, and dig into that big-o-bag of chicken and popcorn, all while hoping not to be seen by anyone from our Baptist Church congregation and most of all Brother Don Camp, the minister of our little Baptist church. Movie going was frowned upon, I fear. As we’d finish a piece of chicken we would throw the bones out the window of the car. When the movie was over and it was time to go, we’d leave behind our little spot of the gravel lot with its hang-on-the-window speaker with nothing to show for our short stay but a pile of bones. It looked like a pack of wolves had made a massive kill and eaten it right there on the spot. I tell you this story to demonstrate our love for food, but also to explain that our conservative palates never ranged far from our local culture. Collard greens were more of a southern thing, definitely soul cuisine, pretty exotic stuff to our resident cook, bless her heart, we never went hungry.

To my knowledge, I would not eat collard greens until I arrived in Yorktown, Virginia while serving in the Marine Corps. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, but I do remember the little place clearly. It was a mom-and-pop joint, the kind with a screen door with a push handle that said “Drink RC Cola.” The inside of this establishment had ribbons of flypaper hanging from a ceiling that hadn’t seen paint or most of its plaster in over 30 years. I fear one more fly on the flypaper strip could have pulled down the whole shebang. I’m sure the one bare light bulb with the black specks on it was securing it all; I was concerned for no reason. It was the kind of place that you know is good because there is no way anyone would enter it otherwise. It was busy all the time. I have learned these kinds of places are most often best of finds. 

My greens would be served by a waitress in a very clean, green uniform. The irony was not lost on me, even in my youth. The greens were served swimming lightly in perfectly seasoned liquid (pot licker) that was laced with some kind of smoked pork. I was not versed at the time on my smoked meat products even though I had worked at the old Emge packing company before joining up with Uncle Sam’s misguided children. My guess, it was shank or hock. The greens were served with cornbread, vinegar and Tabasco sauce, and they were wonderful. I was unaware of the vinegars value back then, but have since come to embrace it for what it brings to the party.

As it turns out, collard greens are easy to grow. You start them early in the spring and they grow into early winter in our area. You replant about mid July for the fall/winter crop. I picked greens at Christmas last year, just to show you how robust the vegetable is. Many say they actually taste better after a light frost. Collards don’t take much care in the garden, but you have to keep the cabbage worms from eating them. a BT product will take care of this and it’s organic. Collard greens are nutritional powerhouses, great for your health in so many ways. I have included a link to explain their nutritional value: http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=138. The “good for you” is all well and good, but it’s the fine eating I am after. Collards are typically cooked slowly and most often along with a ham hock for an all-day simmer. I love them this way, too, but out of necessity one day I made them a bit differently and I may prefer them cooked this abbreviated way now.

Here’s my recipe:

• Take as many leaves as you would like and wash them off in a couple changes of water.
  
• Prepare them for cooking by wrapping your thumb and forefinger around the bottom of the leaf at the stem, pinching the stem just enough so you can still pull the leaf through your fingers, and removing stem from leaf. In other words, you’re pulling the leaf part off of the stem. Dispose of the stems.
  
• Give the leaf a rough chop.
  
• Take some bacon, six strips is about right for a normal batch of about fifteen leaves or so. In a deep pot or Dutch oven, fry the bacon until crisp. Remove the bacon but leave the rendered fat.
  
• After letting the leaves dry a bit from their bath and being stemmed and chopped, add them to the hot bacon grease; they will wilt down considerably.
  
• Add water to the top of the wilted greens along with salt and pepper, a tablespoon of sugar, and a couple dashes of Tabasco sauce (optional).
  
• Cook on the boil for about an hour, adding water as needed but not too much; your goal is to have a nice concentrated pot licker (that’s what they call the rich liquid that results from cooking) and tender greens at the end of cooking.
  
• Sprinkle with crumbled bacon and serve.
  

I like to eat mine with a dash of cider vinegar and a couple dashes of hot sauce. Cornbread is always a welcome side or maybe some Johnnie cakes. Don’t be afraid. Let’s start a crusade to get people to eat more collard greens. They really are delicious.

I’m done talk’n, --Matt