Kitchen Traditions: Carrots

I love fresh carrots above just about any vegetable. We had them last night, and they aren't that difficult to prepare just "labor intense" to quote my husband.

Peel them
Chop them
Boil them
When they are tender to your liking, drain them

We like butter, salt and pepper added right to the bowl of drained, hot carrots. This is not the most healthy way to serve a vegetable. However, "health" food is not my claim here. We served them with freshly steamed Jasmine rice and a thin-cut steak. Perfect meal. No additives, no preservatives and a 1/2 cup of butter.

Kitchen Tradition: 'Rasslin' with Collard Greens

Now this is one that I adapted from a cabbage recipe from a semi-pro wrestler about 20 years ago. What a fun guy. He'd shout things out the window of the car at people walking. He had a great relationship with his mom. One night we were all sitting around in our apartment and the people upstairs were making a terrible racket. Something we'd learned to live with. He took a broom handle and started beating on the ceiling and yelling up for them to quit "walkin'" around so loud.

Anyway. I digress . . .

Collard Greens have to cook and cook . . . cook, so if you're planning on serving these, you'll need to start in advance.

A fresh bundle cost me $2.99 at the grocery store this week. Could be cheaper at a roadside stand or out the back of somebody's pick up truck. So, here's the southern/country style collard greens that people beg me for when they see collards coming into the stores. I don't have measurements. You'll have to figure that one out the same way I did.

Collards (duh) - you have to wash the real good. Cut off the stems up into the leaves.
fatback or bacon - the wrestler used bacon, I use fatback
onions - for a bunch of them, I use two big onions chopped up pretty small
garlic - I use about four - six big cloves sliced real thin
salt and pepper
stick of butter
bottle (or two) of beer - he didn't use the beer
a small amount of crushed red pepper - he didn't use crushed red pepper
ham or pork bouillon - I recently discovered "Better Than Bouillon" Ham Base - other than that, I think BADIA has a pork base that's pretty good.

Put the butter in a big pot, melt it and add the onions, and little while later add the garlic. Last, add the fat back. Saute it up passed the point of being sauteed but not fried. It should turn a nice caramel or butterscotch color and start sticking to the bottom of the pot.

If you leave the stems on the collards, I think they will be bitter. I don't know that for sure. That's just what I was told. Lay the leaf out flat, cut along the stem on each side. It should make a super skinny "V" shape in the leaf. Throw the leaf in a sink full of cold water. When you've got them all done, move the water around the leaves real good so the sand can fall to the bottom of the sink.

Lay the leaves on top of each other in manageable piles on a cutting board and cut the leaves into approximately 2 inch squares. Put the leaves in a collander and rinse them . . . again. To be sure you got all the sand.

Put the beer in the pot with the onions mixture. Now add the collards with the heat temporarily turned off. When the pot is full of collards, fill the pot about half way with water and add the bouillion. The collards will make their own water. This keeps them from sticking. Stirring them every now and then distributes the onion, garlic and fatback.

They will go from a bright green to a dark pine green and be tender, but not mushy like cabbage when they are done. Most of the water will evaporate. Keep an ear and nose out for it to scorch. That smells terrible! It takes about an hour to boil them down completely, but I like to play it by sight and texture.

Don't add too much water at the beginning or at the end. It won't boil off. Wait until you watch how they're going to do on their own. Put the crushed red pepper in to taste. Some people like heat, others like flavor.

Well, that's about as southern or country style as you can get when it comes to collards. My husband never had a collard green in his life until I cooked them for him. When he sees a bunch on the counter, he says his heart "skips a beat".

Once, when I was telling my father-in-law how to make string beans he told me there was no such thing as ham or pork bouillon. I just smiled 'cause I knew there was.

Kitchen Tradition: My Mother's Chicken and Dumplings

We had Chicken and Dumplings (C&D) this week and I made the comment that even though the roots of my meal come directly from my mother, my C&D are different. We agreed that mine had a more rustic restaurant-style appeal than hers. Well, that may be a wrong choice of words. Perhaps mine has evolved due to my husband's Central New York influence. One way it has changed is the seasonings I use in the "soup" portion of the entree and in the biscuits. I use a lot of parsley, rosemary and thyme in my broth. Not to mention I use organic chicken broth. She uses the water from boiling her chicken. I don't boil my chicken. I roast or better yet--smoke it. I put garlic and chunks of butter in my biscuits as well. Sometimes, when I can find an extra extra wide noodle, I will add a few to the broth. Here's the breakdown of mine:

Base
small baked/roasted chicken (picked from the bone, chopped up)
four boxes of organic chicken broth (this could be considered cheating--I find it lower in salt)
parsley
rosemary
thyme
salt
pepper

Bring that to a LOW simmer.

Biscuits
Self-rising flour
Milk
(about 2 to1)
garlic and chopped up butter
romano cheese (good, but makes the biscuits a little dense if you don't like that)

Stir it up. It should be pretty thick. Drop large spoonfuls into the broth and make sure that the broth is not boiling or simmering too much. (Too high of a boil can either break apart the biscuits or make the broth too clear)

Put on a tight fitting lid and leave it alone for a about 20 - 25 minutes. My mother says if you open the lid too soon, the dumplings will "fall". I've never experienced this phenomenon, but then again, I have never opened the lid too soon.

I'm sorry this recipe doesn't have any measurements. I've never measured anything pertaining to this recipe. After 24 years, I pretty much eye ball it. So you'll have to learn to do the same. This is a family favorite that I have never experienced leftovers for more than a day or two.

Let me know how you like it.

Getting To Know Me: I Love Pie -- I Hate Lying

My husband says the other day I was going on and on about Pecan Pie. I think he's wrong, but at the same time, I do like pie and Pecan Pie is my favorite. Of the all the wonderful things I do so well, I can't bake a Pecan Pie. Admittedly, I haven't tried but a few times and was so discouraged at the finished product, I just leave it to Edward's Pies.

Now, I do make a better-than-anything-known-to-man Pumpkin Pie and an even better Country-style Apple Pie. The recipe for the apple came out of a magazine probably something like 20 years ago. It has a great little brown sugar and butter crumb topping and the filling is nothing but apples, sugar and some spices. There's just something about the combination that is a hit. When I make the apple, I have to make two, one to keep at home and the other to take with me.

The Pumpkin Pie is nothing but a dressed up recipe from the outside of the can of Libbys solid pumpkin label. "If it says libby's, libby's, libby's on the label, label, label, you will like it, like it, like it on your table, table table . . ." I remember one Thanksgiving my father-in-law gave me a song and dance about some kind of gastric problem my mother-in-law had with cloves, could I please make one with "less cloves". I was pretty naive at the time. I figured out through process of illimination that he just didn't like cloves and was especially unappreciative of the amount of ground cloves I put in my pumpkin pie. I remember being more angry that he had to lie to me and put it on my mother-in-law. Why couldn't he just tell me to cut back on the cloves on one of the pies at Thanksgiving? He was like that, though. A manipulative liar and a cheat. I didn't offer my pies around the holidays any more while he was alive. I hate lying.

Both pies were good enough to make it to a little waffle house/cafe in our little neighborhood. For a little while, I made two pies each of apple and pumpkin a day until the crusts stuck in the pan and were soggy a few times. The owner of the cafe said my pies were not "consistent" enough. She was going to switch to a prepared pie from a distributor. Her loss.

Ah, well, now I have gone on about pie. I think I will go get an Edward's Pie tomorrow afternoon to have with dinner. Pecan Pie.