Our very sweet neighbor who loves to garden just gave us a HUGE bag of collard greens (as well as some squash and cucumbers)! We are very thankful for his generosity, but we’ve never made collards before! We love trying new foods, and we’ll eat pretty much anything, but we were wondering if you have a favorite way of preparing collards.
Please share your recipes! Thanks!
Here’s a great recipe for some amped up collard greens – you can use bacon for the smoked meat, too:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/collard-greens-recipe/index.html
And I have to share some squash recipes. The first one is for a fabulously simple curry, and I like to add peas, carrots and even cauliflower and broccoli as well as the squash and peppers. I little chopped red chili adds some fantastic spice, too. You can use any curry paste, depending on how mild/spicy you want it, and you can even easily make your own from curry powder and a little water if you can’t find the kind you want in the shops:
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2619/squash-and-coconut-curry
And here’s the recipe for really easy and really tasty squash and stilton pancakes, if you like cheese – you don’t even have to make the pancakes yourself if you don’t want to, you can just fill the shop-bought kind:
http://www.redonline.co.uk/food/recipes/butternut-squash-and-stilton-pancakes
Enjoy!
Oh my goodness. Dan’s family (generation upon generation of rural Georgians) is ALL ABOUT some collards! I’ll have to see if I can get their recipe for you. I think they basically just boil them with salt and pepper until they’re all dark and wilty (your house will smell), but the secret is in the sauces/add-ins.
They have 3 staples: 1. Cornbread (not the sweet Jiffy kind, the real, Cracker Barrell not sweet kind). 2. Tomato Ketchup (Don’t be fooled, it’s nothing like ketchup, it’s really a homemade tomato sauce). 3. Pepper Sauce (which is the juice from inside a jar of peppers. I’m not sure what kind/brand).
Just plop some collards in a dish, crumble a little square of cornbread in there, and add the pepper sauce and tomato ketchup to taste. It’s definitely different than anything I’d ever had before – but pretty good! And certainly a switch up from the regular dinner veggies. They usually serve collards with a meal like black-eyed peas and a meat (like smoked pork or a whole BBQ chicken).
That, my friend, is REAL SOUTHERN collards! 🙂 (I’ll see if I can find out about the pepper and tomato sauces for you).
One simple way is to saute them in a deep frying pan, also called a chicken frier,(preferably cast iron but it doesn’t have to be) in lard or olive oil. Saute them gently so they don’t shrivel up too much or burn. If they seem a little boring that way then you can also add some soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, or other sauce to them when you eat them.