The plant cafeteria had a special superbowl tailgate barbecue lunch yesterday, and I couldn’t resist. It wasn’t at all bad. Besides lots of ribs (and that was after I told the cook, “I’m a small guy, give me a small batch of ribs”) there was cornbread, baked beans, cole slaw, and corn. I would have been delighted with it, except that the family had decided that we were going out to dinner to celebrate my birthday (two weeks after the fact, as it happened), and I had chosen to go to Bob’s Southern Bistro, the former Bob The Chef’s, so I could get barbecue. I would have preferred to spread my rib consumption out more.
Less than half of my reason for wanting to go to Bob’s is the barbecue. The rest is the side dishes and dessert. There are other places that have decent barbecue in the Boston area (notably Blue Ribbon in West Newton, and Charley recommends Redbones in Davis Square), but I don’t know any other source of good collard greens, blackeyed peas, or sweet potato pie. Except for times that I get to choose where we go to eat, or if I try to cook blackeyes myself (a losing proposition in a kosher kitchen) I’ll never get any of those. So, even though I left over some of the main dish, I ate my vegetables.
Yum ! But of course if you had come to Circles New Year Celebration you could have had all three as I made black eyes peas, collards, and sweet potatoe pie. If there is ever another occassion I will give you a heads up. I made vegetarian versions of both dishes. And as such I will give a great quicl recipes for collards.
Get a bunchs of collards, wash them and slice them by taking out that large middle stem and lay 3 to 4 leaves on top. Roll them up tightly like a cigar and slice the leaves thinly, almost like cole slaw or no thicker than a scant 1/2 inch. Meanwhile, heat a good olive oil in the pan – think 11/2 to 2 tbls to 1 lb- with a couple of cloves of garlic.
After rising cut collards place them in hot oil, stirrng greens as they wilt. Add more greens as the wilting ones make room in the pot. You can cook them to your liking, crunchy or not, stirring as you go. I finish them off with a couple of tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and sometimes a dash of West Indian hot sauce.
I’ve been cooking (to my great surprise!) brussels sprouts a lot like that — wash, cut in half (or don’t), saute lots of chopped garlic in olive oil, add sprouts and cook in the olive oil, mostly covered. The surprise is, they’re really good that way.
I’d love to have a sweet potato pie recipe —