Mess of Greens

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Mess of Greens Dip

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2017 was a bittersweet year for me. I lost my mama, but gained a new little boy. I’m looking forward to New Year’s Day as a way to move forward and look for the good in the world.

New Year’s Day (when there’s no hangover involved) has always one of my favorite days of the year. Everything seems new, full of possibilities, everyone sticks close to home, hanging by a fire, watching football, and eating greens, cornbread, and black eyed peas….it’s basically the perfect day for cold icy weather (which the south is getting in spades tonight).

The thing is, I know that not everybody is crazy about the New year’s Day tradition of eating greens for money and black eyed peas for luck.Maybe you’re the kind of person who loves a warm bowl of chili instead while you watch the game. Well, lucky for you, I AM crazy about it, and always try to find new ways to eat my greens & peas. My aunt passed along a version of this recipe to me last year and after seeing how fast it disappeared at my little get together last year, it’s going to be a STAPLE every time. It’s basically spinach-artichoke dip all southerned-up. Once you’ve tasted it, it’ll be on your table every year, too….

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New Year, New Take on an Old Favorite: Greens, Bacon, White Bean Pot Pie

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I love cold, wintery weather… the more freezing, the more dreary, the better. I’ve loved these days since college in Virginia, when exams always seemed to fall on the snowiest, coldest days of the year and I would find myself sequestered with my favorite people in our house with soup, DVD marathons of The OC or Sex and the City (yep, college was in the early 2000s). Now when the weather is cold & dreary I can’t help but want to cook ALL the comfort food, watch all the crappy TV, and snuggle under a blanket with my loves. Unfortunately, it never, NEVER gets below 40 degrees in South Mississippi. Like, ever. This week, though, we went from having a rainy 75 degree New Year’s Day, to an icy 23 degree Friday. (and next week we’re looking at 7o degree temps again, too). Anyway, this means that I had to seize the moment and make ALL the food. So far, I’ve roasted a chicken, baked cookies, made curried cauliflower & cabbage soup, and baked this PERFECTION of a pot pie. We ate it on the coldest night while the sleet was peppering our wall of windows, and then we snuggled down to watch something Netflix recommended. I hope you’ll do the same since it’s a delcious way to take advantage of the seasonal greens all over grocery stores, and make a homey, yummy supper.


 
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Author:
Serves: 4-5
What You Need
  • PIE CRUST:
  • 1 Pie Crust
  • 1 Egg
  • 1 Tablespoon Milk
  • FILLING
  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 4 slices cooked bacon, diced
  • 4 slices, thick cut ham, diced
  • 1 large onion, diced
  • 2 carrots, peeled, finely chopped
  • 2 stalks celery, finely chopped
  • ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • Kale, Collard greens, or chard leaves chiffonaded/sliced into strips
  • 2 cans White (Cannellini) beans, drained
  • SAUCE
  • 3½ Cups chicken or vegetable broth
  • 3½ Tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 3½ Tablespoons all-purpose flour
What to Do
  1. MAKE THE FILLING
  2. Heat the olive oil in a dutch oven, and cook the onions until translucent.
  3. Season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.
  4. Add in the celery, carrots, and garlic and sautee' for about 2-3 minutes
  5. In handfuls, put the greens into the pot and stir until wilted.
  6. Once the greens have been wilted, add in the beans in and the ham and bacon.
  7. Cook and stir for 5 minutes and then scoop into 4-5 small ramekins or 1 large deep round corningware dish
  8. MAKE THE SAUCE
  9. In the same dutch oven, and without worrying about wiping it out, melt the butter.
  10. Once it's entirely melted and bubbly, add in the flour a tablespoon at a time and whisk it in vigorously so that it totally incorporates. Continue until you've used all the flour.
  11. Keep stirring and cooking until it's turned golden in color.
  12. At this point, pour in the stock ½ Cup at time and keep stirring.
  13. Cook on medium heat, stirring continuously until thickened and reduced slightly (about 10 minutes)
  14. ASSEMBLE THE PIES
  15. Pour the sauce evenly over the filling.
  16. Put the pie pastry over the top of each pie and cut slits in the top to let out any additional steam
  17. In a bowl, whisk the egg & milk until entirely combined.
  18. Using a pastry brush, paint the tops of each pie for a gorgeous, golden brown crust (not necessary, but HIGHLY recommended)
  19. Bake at 350 until bubbling and golden brown.
  20. Serve hot.

 

Sweet Potato, Kale, and Sausage stew

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Ok, it’s freezing all over America, right? Like everywhere? Except here. Our former town is probably covered in frost and ice (Can someone in Leland, MS confirm, please?) but here in Laurel, it’s just overcast and muggy. Although there’s SO MUCH to love about the deepest and farthest south, the winter weather isn’t one of them if you happen to like cold. However, I’m not going to let our mosquito-ridden warm front stop me from making the most delicious, easy, healthy soup on the planet, snuggling up with a bowl of it, cup of hot coffee, and pretend it’s a glorious 21 degrees. I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you do this, also, even if you aren’t pretending.

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Channeling Little Bankok: Collard Greens & Venison Larb

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For the past 5 years of  my life, the closest Thai restaurant has been two hours away in Memphis or Jackson. Since this is one of my MOST favorite kinds of food, and we lived around the corner from an AMAZING hole-in-the-wall place in Atlanta where we ate at least once a week, this had been one of the hardest parts of small-town Mississippi life. It meant that I needed to figure out some approximations of my favorite dishes…and I can say that I’ve gotten pretty good at massaman and green curry and larb.
But y’all! NOW, we live 30 minutes from a nice little spot in Hattiesburg, so we can basically eat Thai food whenever the craving strikes. It’s so fantastic.

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Pickled Mustard Greens

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I was thinking about the crazy abundance of mustard greens that I had in my fridge the other day (Maybe I got a little too excited at the .50/bunch sale at Kroger…) and wondered if pickled greens were a thing. With a little googling, it turned out that they ARE a thing and super popular in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai food! Hooray! This was AWESOME news as I’d already decided it was going to be a thing for me even if it wasn’t a real thing.

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Greens with Spicy Pot Likkor and Cornmeal Dumplings

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 It’s the time of year when greens are ubiquitous down here. It’s winter, the farms and gardens are full of them, and y’all, I just can’t resist them. The leafy beauty and the promise of steamy pot likker and spicy flavor just beckons me. I had a big bunch and started thinking about my grandmother and leafed through the cookbook my cousin Amy made with all her recipes, and settled on trying out her turnip greens with cornmeal dumplings. I’d never made them before, but the idea of greens with some version of cornmeal as dumplings made my mouth water. What followed was a three week crusade to figure out how to create dumplings that didn’t melt into nothingness but instead were chewy, comforting and wonderful. What ended was a series of phone calls to my aunt and cousins about our lovely grandmother and her recipe, lots of sort-of-ok dumplings,  and then finally, a darn good recipe that DEINITELY was worth sharing with all of you lovely folks.
BUT, before I get to that, I wanted to live up to my New Year’s blog resolution to “give credit where credit is due.” I’ll spare you the sermon, but I can’t cook greens and pot likker without remembering that SO MUCH of the south’s incredible culinary heritage came from former enslaved Americans, and this dish almost certainly originated when black cooks, trying to feed their families, reserved the deliciousness and nutrient-rich broth after cooking the greens for their masters. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I do want to, as an Atlantic writer wrote in an article, raise “a shot glass of [pot likker] in a respectful toast to the slave cooks who did the unglamorous work. They developed the roots of African-American eating the rest of us get to enjoy today.” If you want to know more, DEFINITELY check out Michael Twiddy’s blog about southern food and it’s roots Afroculinaria. It’s full of history, and food, and connections that are important and sometimes hard to hear. His work is so integral to our southern culture, he should be a Macarthur Genius Fellow, in my humble opinion.

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Kale Greens & Toasted Pecan Pesto

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How do you feel about pesto?
Me? I can mostly take it or leave it. UNLESS it’s on a pizza. but then I pretty much always take ANYTHING and EVERYTHING if it’s on a pizza, so that’s not really a fair thing to say. I think it’s something to do with the pine nuts and all that basil.
Anyway, a friend of mine, some other of my favorite mamas, and I were talking about getting kiddos to eat veggies (so far the sweet potato & spinach mac ‘n cheese and veggie puree’ squeeze pouches have been my only success stories) and my sweet friend said that kale pesto was THE way to go. On sweet potatoes, on pasta, whatever. It was GREEN and her little lady ate it up.

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Mess of Greens Soup

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 So, here you have it… literally a recipe for a “mess of greens.” It’s about time, right? 
You may have tried some of my other New Year’s Day recipes (see pickled peas, black eyed pea hummus or lucky soup) but unlike all of those recipes that focus on black eyed peas, greens play a starring role in this year’s dish to bring us all luck and money in 2015. I was lucky enough to have a friend bring me a gallon bag of mustard and turnip greens from her winter garden yesterday, PLUS a gallon bag of shelled pecans (y’all. aren’t I so lucky?!?) and I’d had some pretty delish turnip green soup at Turnrow books a couple of weeks back, so it seemed like a no-brainer. My dish is pretty standard compared to the other ones you find on the interweb, except I gave my broth a spicy kick with some red pepper flakes, and use bacon AND ham (why choose just one?). Hope you enjoy!

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Lucky Soup with Black Eyed Peas, Greens, and Bacon

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By now, y’all know that I’m not going to let a New Year’s Day pass without eating Black eyed peas and greens in SOME form or fashion for luck and money in the New Year… I’ve made pickled peas, black eyed pea hummus, and this year, I combined the two good-luck foods with pork (a German good-luck food) into a spicy, warm soup. I had some friend over…one of whom asked, “wait, what’s the deal with this soup? is it really eaten for luck?”
This gave me the chance to explain what little I know about the peas… but thankfully I’d read this post about the history beforehand so I knew a little more than past years.
In short, the peas are tied to southern history… they were introduced to the south from West or North Africa and are an ancient food eaten on that continent and also across Asia. Either way you tell it, eating BEP on New Year’s Day dates back to the Civil War. Black eyed peas are undoubtedly an important ingredient in some soul-food dishes, so while there are multiple stories about WHY we eat the peas (from the White Southern Community AND the African American Southern community) exist, I think that the history of BEP as a soul-food staple gives credence to that legend. The way the history goes, the only thing many slaves had to eat on the first day of January were these peas because they were one of the few crops left in the winter fields since the Union armies and Slave-owners thought of them as livestock feed. That day in 1863,  the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, outlawing slavery and these peas were consumed. From then on, they’ve been considered good luck for the future.
Thinking that BEPs are tied not only to good luck but also to a major milestone for freedom and justice in our country makes me even more committed to eating them and looking ahead on the year and what it can bring! Read on for yet another way to have your luck (and for a generally warm, hearty soup for winter time!)
Lucky Soup
What you need:
1 bag  of dried black eyed peas soaked overnight (or 2-3 cans)
4-6 Cups of washed and chopped greens like turnip or/and kale
one jalepeno, diced
2 celery ribs, diced
1 green pepper, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
3-5 strips of bacon
2 cans of diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons of tomato paste
salt, pepper
1 /2 Tablespoon of ground thyme
1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
Optional: A splash or two of red wine or balsamic vinegar

 

What to Do:
If you’re using dried black eyed peas, the first step begins the night before you plan to make the soup…dump the peas out and sift through them for any beans that have been eaten through or are a darker or redder brown… i don’t think they’ll hurt you  but it’s better to get rid of them in the beginning. Once that’s done, rinse them in a collander and then soak the dried peas in enough water to cover them and then a little bit more. The peas will soak up the water and hydrate, making them soft enough to cook and eat. If you use canned or frozen peas you can skip both of these first steps… and if you forget (heaven forbid!) to overnight soak your peas, then you can do a “quick soak” by putting them in a pot of salted, boiling water for 5-10 minutes. Honestly, I worried that I hadn’t used enough water in my overnight soak, so I did about a 2 minute boil of the peas anyway… the “quick soak” method doesn’t really hurt anything, BUT, beware, it does mean that you’ll end up with more half-peas or peas without the thin casing that holds the two halved together since the boiling water tends to rub that off more easily.
Once your peas are softened or softening, it’s time to cook the bacon! Pork has some sort of lucky significance for Germans, plus bacon just goes SO WELL with peas and turnip greens that it makes sense that we’d cook our veggies in all that flavor. Put the bacon in your pot and cook until brown…
While that’s happening, take the time to dice up your vegetables. Celery, onion, garlic, green bell pepper, and jalepeno pepper were what I used, but you could substitute red bell pepper and chipotle pepper if you wanted a litte bit different look and flavor here..

TIP:  did you know that whole jalepeno peppers freeze really well? If your garden grows more than you can handle, or you just accidentally buy too many at the store, you can drop them in a plastic bag and freeze them until you need them! These came from my aunt’s garden, and thanks to her I have all the peppers I need for a year!

 

Ok, so your veggies are chopped and your bacon has crisped in the pot. Take the bacon out and put it on a paper towel to cool for a bit. Then, dump in your onions into the bacon grease in the bottom of your pot and cook until their translucent.

Add in the garlic and cook briefly until tender, then add in the other diced vegetables. Stir them and cook them until they are a little tender and add in your salt, pepper, thyme, and red pepper flakes. (I gave my approximate seasoning measures above, but I was being conservative this time. feel free to liberally season this soup to your liking!)

Add in your peas, your canned tomatoes and tomato paste.

While that’s all simmering a bit, you’ll want to prepare your greens if you haven’t already.

TIP: I like to clean mine ahead of time and then store them after rinsing them and pulling the leaves off of the stalks (because those kale and turnip green stalks can be TOUGH) in a damp paper towel in a large zip-lock bag. This keeps the greens from wilting and can keep greens (and lettuces, too) fresh for nearly a week. If you haven’t prepped your greens in advance, rinse them thoroughly and pull the leaves from the stalk, then chop or rip up the greens into smaller pieces.

Dump those into the pot (and if you’re adding vinegar or wine, now is the time to do it) and stir around until everything’s all mixed together and let simmer on low for at least one hour so all the flavors mix together. I cooked mine for about 1.5 hours, then let it sit for another 2 hours, then reheated it and tasted for salt and pepper.

 

Serve it with bread and a side salad and you’ve got LUCK for the whole year! Happy new Year!