Kitchen Tradition: Look Who's Coming to Dinner and Peeling Tomatoes

I'm having company tonight for a simple Italian meal. I have to work to keep simple the operative word when it is time for me to have company, so I usually limit myself to an entree, two sides and a salad. My guests usually bring their specialty. Tonight's guest's specialty is BRICK OVEN BREAD! She has this contraption I've never seen that goes in her regular oven. All I know is that it is probably some of the best Artisan-style bread I've ever had. She brings these little bowls and olive oil and spices and it's all I can do to keep myself from eating only bread.

So I am going to make Bruschetta to serve on her bread. It starts with tomatos diced up so tiny you can spoon them. There's chopped garlic, olive oil (of course) and basil. To me, oregano is too strong for this, but if you want, oregano works. A little bit of balsamic vinegar and it's done.

You'll need to peel the tomatoes. That can be done by LIGHTLY scoring the skins, dipping them in super boiling water for a count of somewhere around 30 seconds. You'll see the skins begin to recede. Don't cook the tomato. I hold onto them with tongs or these things in the picture:

This is what I use to hold on to the tomato in the boiling water.

I learned how to do that when I worked the dining room at a Holiday Inn. Yes, Holiday Inns used to be very upscale. This particular dining room was the nicest restaurant I've ever worked at. There was a man that came in every evening for tomatos and burnt toast. The hotel was on a golf course that was surrounded by an upper class community. Funny how we remember these things. I also learned how to fold napkins in a really fancy way for their dinner seating. Maybe we'll hit on that some other day.

Anyway, back to the tomato peeling. The man liked his tomato peeled and sliced and that's how I learned.

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.