Cooking Fact #1: Anything vaguely bland and un-tasty cooked with fatty pieces of salty pork or bacon will (most likely) always yield a succulent dish.
The southerners have proven that with collard greens.
Let’s face it, collard greens aren’t tasty little buggers. On the contrary, they are daunting, ginormous looking, stiff greens that could pass off as a hippie’s organic fan. But after a mouth-watering inducing description of how one southerner (an ex-work colleague) liked eating them – slow cooked with bacon until soft and topped with tangy chopped onions - I was willing to give this mammoth leaf a second look.
But when you have a vegan in the house, bacon in cooking - especially in a shared vegetable dish- is considered un-kosher. I tried to slow cook chopped up seasoned collard greens but without the bacon, the flavors were a big ‘meh’ and the texture more suited for gummy smiles. There really wasn’t anything praise-worthy about a bowlful of dull mush.
When the truly inspired came up with an idea of using collard greens as wraps -- like an earthy version of the Greek’s Dolmades-- it was time to re-think these beefy leaves. This was an idea worth exploring even if it was time consuming but I have at least one minion who loves helping me in the kitchen. And together, we nudged and folded rice into lacey green rolls. The end result yielded plump and moist bites so tasty that it was hard to imagine it was all possible even without the comforting bacon drippings. The collard greens were distinct but it didn’t overpower the flavors of my chopped onions, grated carrots, dill, sundried tomatoes and rice mix. Combined, the texture was buttery smooth and suprisingly sublime.
Cooking Fact #2– “Fatty bacon, you may now step aside.”
Cooking Fact #2– “Fatty bacon, you may now step aside.”
