Lucky the person served Good Luck Greens and Peas with Ham

“Good Luck” is in the name of this recipe; whoever gets a taste of this dish is lucky indeed. Collard greens and black-eyed peas, along with a slice of ham, simmer in a slow cooker for 6 hours. The aromas that emerge from that slow cooker are unbelievable.

At the end of the cooking time, the meal that is produced would be terrific for Thanksgiving week, as a Thanksgiving side, or to freeze a batch for those crazy-busy days that are about to descend on us.

The recipe suggests serving the ham alongside the greens, but I diced it up and stirred it back into the greens and black-eyed peas. Delicious!

Good Luck Greens and Peas with Ham

1 (32-ounce) container vegetable broth

1 (16-ounce) package frozen black-eyed peas, thawed

1 sweet onion, cut into eighths

1/4 cup apple-cider vinegar

1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons country-style Dijon mustard

1 (5- to 6-pound) smoked, fully cooked semi-boneless ham (I used a ham steak)

1 (1-pound) package shredded fresh collard greens

Place first 5 ingredients in a 6-quart slow cooker. Stir together brown sugar and mustard; rub mixture over ham. Place ham in slow cooker. Cover and cook on high 6 to 7 hours or until ham is tender. Uncover and add collard greens. Cover and cook on high 1 additional hour or until tender. Slice ham and serve with greens mixture. Makes 8 servings. (Source: Southern Living November 2012)

What got this “Wow!” of “Wow!”s from Hubby? Not chocolate decadence but greens casserole!

After being my accomplice for all the 212 blog entries I’ve completed, Hubby has sampled every dish I’ve prepared before I entered each recipe. That’s a lot of taste-testing in more than a year—and a lot of “attagirl!” affirmations on his part.

I can’t think of any recipe in those 212 that Hubby hasn’t complimented—some more vociferously than others, of course, but Hubby always been free with the superlatives. Makes my job as chief cook and apprentice food blogger much easier, I must say.

But for him to be forthcoming with the remark, “This has to go down as my all-time favorite of anything you’ve cooked”, I had to take notice. “You mean one of your favorites?” I queried. “No, the ABSOLUTE favorite.” Well, that’s sayin’ somethin’, for sure.

Mind you, this wasn’t Chocolate Decadence or some sicky-sweet multilayer dessert he was puffing. It was none other than today’s blog subject, Greens Casserole with Mozzarella. Perhaps this happened because his own greens from his own garden (and the tail-end of them, mind you) represented the impetus for the recipe. But Hubby kept bragging and gushing and going back for more casserole. At one point he suggested that this was THE DISH I needed to bring to the next family gathering. At another point he walked into my office crunching a tortilla chip and murmuring, “This would make a good dip, too.”

Well, onto this attention-getting recipe, which took the last of the last of our 2011 crop of collard greens but was a fitting sayonara to them. It merely was a mixture of wilted greens, a sauce of milk, butter, flour, and cheeses and a topping of dry bread crumbs with Mozzarella cheese sprinkled on. I baked it in a 7-inch-by-11-inch casserole dish. It didn’t last long. (Recipe source: www.nikibone.com) Using my own homemade chicken broth, skim milk, part-skim (instead of whole-milk) ricotta cheese, and whole-wheat bread for the dry breadcrumbs were the redeeming health features, besides of course, the fresh-from-the-garden green leafies. As we know, collard greens provide anticancer properties and offer an excellent source of vitamins B6 and C, carotene, chlorophyll, and manganese. One cup of collard greens provides more than 70 percent of the recommended daily allowance for vitamin C.

Bye-bye, collard greens. You’ve been a blast and taught us a lot and been the star of our winter garden. We’ll for sure remember you at the time of next year’s plantings.

Greens Casserole with Mozzarella

1 1/2 pounds collard greens, washed and trimmed

salt (or salt substitute) and freshly ground back pepper

1 cup chicken or vegetable broth

1 cup skim milk

4 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 cup ricotta cheese, whole milk or part skin

3 tablespoons dry bread crumbs

2 ounces Mozzarella cheese, shredded

Butter a 1 1/2-quart baking dish or casserole; preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cut out and discard the tough stems from the greens; cut out thick center ribs. Rinse all the greens and shake off any excess water; chop them into 1/2-inch pieces. In a large skillet cook the greens over low heat; add them by handfuls and stir them down as they wilt. Add 1/2 cup of water if the greens seem dry; then cover the skillet and braise for 10 to 15 minutes or until tender. Pour off any liquid left in the skillet; then season the greens to your preference with salt and pepper. Transfer greens to a bowl and set aside. Heat the broth and milk in a saucepan, just until bubbles form around the edge of the pan. In the large skillet melt the butter over low heat. Add the flour and cook, stirring for one minute. Add the hot broth mixture all at once and stir over medium heat until the sauce is smooth and thickened. Whisk in the grated Parmesan and ricotta. Stir the greens into the cheese sauce; pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle with the bread crumbs and then sprinkle the grated mozzarella over the top; bake for 20 minutes or until the sauce is bubbling and the mozzarella is melted and lightly browned. Serve immediately. Serves 6.

Collard Greens and Tomatoes: my previously nonexistent collards repertoire grows by leaps and bounds

Part of Hubby’s admonition about knowing “when to fold em” in terms of harvesting garden crops such as the collard greens at just the right moment involves finding quick outlets for the basketful of goodies he brings in.

Smiling like a Cheshire cat, he may tote in this container full of fresh produce and feel pleased as any successful gardener might, but inwardly I’m cringing. What now? I groan to myself. I don’t want to waste this lovely produce that God has provided for us, but how can I possibly cook everything before it ruins?

The website, www.nikibone.com, I’ve been bragging about saved the day again with Collard Greens with Tomatoes. Virtually any cook already has these simple ingredients on hand. The collards/tomatoes mixture made a great side dish. I’ve gone from a lifetime of never having much association with this wonderful veggie to becoming a daily companion of inventive ways to prepare it.

A word about the “rinse-well” portion of the recipe. One can’t over-rinse. Just as I was about to tear these tender collards into bite-sized pieces and throw them in the pan, a wee visitor crept onto the handle of my spoon. A mini garden worm had made his way into the house with the basket of veggies. He had managed to hide himself in a crevice of a collard leaf during my vigorous cleansing of the leaves under the faucet. Now, sensing danger as his leaf-home was destined for the heated pot, he was fleeing for his life. Busted! But t’was a lesson to me: rinse vigilantly; don’t lightly brush by that stage. After all, this is the G-A-R-D-E-N we’re talking about!

Collard Greens with Tomatoes

2 pounds collard greens, washed and cut or torn in bite-sized pieces

2 tablespoons Italian seasoning, or a combination of basil, oregano, and rosemary

1 (14-ounce) can no-salt-added tomatoes, chopped and drained, reserving liquid

Rinse torn leaves well; do not dry them. Put in a large pan and let greens wilt over medium-low heat. Add Italian seasoning and chopped tomatoes; continue to heat for about 5 minutes. Add as much of the liquid from the tomatoes as you want. Heat for about 4 more minutes or until mixture is hot. Serves 4.

Salsa-Stuffed Collards a south-of-the-border twist of an exotic favorite

Collards, collards, collards. When you have as many as we do growing in our garden—with huge, green, healthy leaves that are almost a foot-wide—you have to be resourceful in looking for recipe ideas. And as Hubby says, "We also need to use these up quickly before they get too mature!"

I simply Googled “recipes for collard greens”. On the Internet appeared screen after screen of recipes entitled “Veggie Side Dishes—Collard Greens” from the website called Nikibone.com. I was agog at the dozens of ways to prepare this vegetable with which I never had fraternized much previously.

I promise you I won’t go extreme and try each one for this blog, although doing so would be tempting. I spotted nothing in the assemblage that didn’t seem terrific. But (partly because I needed to use up some ground turkey in the fridge) I did settle on “Salsa-Stuffed Collard Greens” as my first attempt. I did so because this calls for the greens to be rolled up around a meat filling (think of the popular Greek recipe for dolmades, in which a stuffing is rolled around a grape leaf); our collard leaves are so wide, they seemed as though they were great candidates. Hubby and I love Greek cuisine; this recipe with the collards seemed like a south-of-the-border twist on an exotic favorite.

That’s the part at which my process almost fell apart. (Emergency blog? I started to panic as my first few efforts at rolling the collard leaves derailed.) The recipe asks the cook to rinse the fresh-from-the-garden leaves, lie them flat, and cut out the bottom portion of the center vein, and cook the leaf in boiling water for about 5 minutes. At the end of the 5-minute boiling-water bath, the collard leaf had withered into a small ball that barely filled a tablespoon—hardly suitable for lying flat and stuffing. Five minutes clearly was too long to boil the leaves. Instead I merely dipped each in the boiling water just long enough for it to soften and become un-crispy; then I quickly spirited each over to waiting paper towels. I spread each leaf out to dry and blotted the tops to remove excess liquid. This will work; no emergency blog needed, I tried to reassure myself.

The whole process was a bit time-consuming and something I definitely wouldn’t attempt for a dinner-in-a-jiffy, but the look of all the stuffed collard leaves nudging each other in the bubbling sauce and the resulting wonderful flavor of the end product made everything worthwhile. Plus the stuffing made enough to fill at least an additional half-dozen leaves, so I can make up another batch in a few days.

In later blogs watch out for such goodies as Greens Casserole with Mozzarella, Mess o’ Greens Salad with Warm Pecan Dressing, or Collard Greens with Tomatoes. Your horizons will be expanded as mine have been. Who knew the humble collard was so versatile?

Salsa-Stuffed Collard Greens

12 large, fresh collard green leaves

1 pound lean ground beef (or ground turkey)

1 cup finely chopped celery

3/4 cup chopped onion

2 cups hot cooked brown rice

4 cups salsa (mild, medium or hot), according to taste (I used mild; recipe was plenty spicy)

4 tablespoons taco seasoning mix

1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese

1 teaspoon salt (or salt substitute)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Thoroughly wash collard leaves; gently shake off excess water. Lay leaves flat to cut out bottom portion of center vein; do not cut leaves in half; keep leaves whole. Dip leaves one at a time in boiling water; remove immediately as soon as the leaf softens (30-45 seconds at the most. Do not leave in water more than this.) Repeat until all leaves are cooked. Spread cooked leaves flat on paper towels to drain. Blot top side. In large skillet cook the ground beef, onion, and celery together until beef is done and onions and celery are soft. Drain fat; stir in rice, taco seasoning, and 2 cups of salsa. Add salt to taste. Mix well. On each flattened collard leaf place about 1/2-cup filling. Spread evenly. Fold in left and right sides of the leaf about 1 inch. Starting at the unfolded end of the leaf, roll up the leaf and enclose the beef mixture. Repeat until leaves all are filled. Place stuffed leaves in a buttered, 3-quart baking dish; cover with remaining two cups salsa. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes. Top with cheese; bake 5 more minutes. Serve hot. Makes 6 servings.

Collard greens from the garden mature just in time for celebratory blog

Today marks the 200th posting for my blog; I had hoped to have something spectacular to blog about to celebrate this milestone. Nature provided just the celebratory item!

Yesterday afternoon from the garden Hubby brought in an armful of collard greens, hardy survivors of the ice storm of Super Bowl week back in February.

I didn’t know I could be so in love with collards. The leaves on these were humongous; they were crisp and fresh and perfect. Hubby says that in the past one of our biggest challenges in growing greens of any kind has been picking them at just the right moment. He says often we wait too late; therefore the taste is slightly bitter. This year’s ferrying in of our new greens occurred at the ideal time while they were succulent.

I had been eyeing a recipe called “Wilted Greens Salad” in my Celebrating a Healthy Harvest handbook. It called for combining any greens one happens to have on hand—collards, mustard, beet, kale, Swiss chard, spinach, dandelion—enough to amount to about a pound (I had some spinach in the fridge already.) These then are mixed and wilted in a hot skillet that contains chicken broth and vinegar as the wilting agent. Since the recipe is designed to be served warm, I was unable to determine how it acquired the “salad” label, except I imagined the vinegar mixture which forms the liquid causes this recipe to be as good chilled in the fridge as it is warmed in the skillet.

And need I extol the wonders of greens? Most everyone knows they deliver more nutrients in fewer calories than virtually any food out there. They help regulate blood pressure and contain the important nutrients magnesium, iron, calcium, folate, vitamin C, and vitamin B6, plus all the cancer- and heart-disease fighting phytochemicals. In fact the difference between people who have heart attacks and those who don’t is said to be how many trips they make to the salad bar, provided they make those salads with greens beyond just iceberg lettuce.

Many suggest trimming the stems on leafy greens because they’re thought to be unpleasantly tough, but for my “Wilted Greens Salad”” I threw in the entire collard leaf, stem and all. The stems cooked up just as tender as the leaves did.

The whole experience was a taste-fest; I was very thankful that the collard leaves were spared in the frost and that they matured just in time to help me celebrate this red-letter day of enjoying my delightful blogging pastime. I look forward to Hubby harvesting the rest of the collard-green crop very soon, so we can have this recipe again and often.

Wilted Greens Salad

1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth

1 tablespoon vinegar

1 pound greens blend (spinach, beet, collard, kale, etc.)

freshly ground pepper and salt substitute to taste

Rinse greens thoroughly. In a 12-inch nonstick skillet heat broth and vinegar over high heat until mixture boils. Add greens; stir and cook, covered, until greens are wilted, about 2-3 minutes. Uncover, stir, and cook on high heat until the greens are tender and the liquid evaporates, about 5 minutes. (Don’t overcook.) Season with salt substitute and pepper to taste. Serve. Makes 4 servings.