GREENS!

[vkn]

Of late, we have been fascinated by the myriad benefits of GREENS. They are a vital source of essential minerals, calcium, and vitamins; all those health protecting elements of food.

We are very curious to know all different recipes that you know to eat our greens. Hope you would also agree and share with us about your encounters with your daily greens.

Here are three different traditional recipe details to share with you for today - Creamed greens sauce, Amaranth Poreel, and Drumstick leaves fried with eggs.

How do you eat your greens? Let's share.

[Lilija]

My favorite treatment for spinach, which we eat quite frequently (2 times a week, at least) Is the simpest one. Wilted, with lots of sauteed garlic, olive oil, salt, and red pepper flakes. Sometimes I'll throw in random cheeses, whatever's laying around, feta, chevre, parmesan, even cheddar or swiss. Just sorta sprinkled around, not melted into the dish.

I could eat spinach every night, like this.

I also like making soup, with kale, cream soups, potato/sausage soups, stuff like that.

We chop and add spinach to most stuffings, poultry stuffings, pork loin stuffings. My favorite stuffing is chopped spinach, a little cream, some feta, red pepper flakes, and toasted breadcrumbs. This tastes good rolled inside fish filets (like tilapia) or in pork loin chop pockets.

Also good inside manicotti, stuffed shells, lasagna, just mixed in with the ricotta filling, sometimes with crumbled sausage. Ricotta, spinach, and sausage, that flavor combo is definitely more than a sum of its parts.

My favorite seasonings for it are red pepper flakes, hot sauce, nutmeg, garlic, stuff like that.

[ChryZ]

I'm especially fond of steamed broccoli dressed with a little butter or olive oil or flax seed oil or lemon zest/juice or balsamic vinegar or roasted sesame seeds/oil combo ... depending on the rest of the dish.

[Gifted Gourmet]

I love salads and make a baby frisee salad from Epicurious that is well loved and often requested. Lettuce wraps, iceberg lettuce wedge with a thick bleu cheese, the Ming Tsai version of garlic spinach, creamed spinach, and many others .. thanks for asking this important question here!

[rlibkind]

Mark Bittman offers one of my favs in 'How To Cook Everything..." for Brazilian style greens. Essentially coarsely chopped kale or collards. Heat a wok on high, add 1/4 c olive oil, when hot add lots of thin sliced garlic to taste (at least three or four cloves; six or seven would be better), a dash of red pepper flakes and salt and cook for only a minute. Then add greens and toss until it just starts to brown. If you like, splash with a little lemon juice or good vinegar immediately before removing.

[mizducky]

Here are three different traditional recipe details to share with you for today - Creamed greens sauce, Amaranth Poreel, and Drumstick leaves fried with eggs. 

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Cool! I'm only barely familiar with amaranth leaves, and have never heard of drumstick leaves at all until now. Next time I'm in an Indian market I'll be sure to keep an eye peeled for them.

Folks from the American Southeast may find this kind of laughable, but I taught myself how to cook greens with hamhocks out of a cookbook (in my defense, it was this Kwanzaa cookbook, a most excellent compendium of cooking from all over the African diaspora). I start from the "Three mixed greens" recipe in that book, mainly using two rather than three varieties of greens, usually collards and mustard greens. I simmer a couple of hamhocks alone in water to cover for about 45 minutes first, discarding the water, to give the hocks a headstart and remove some of their excessive saltiness. I then re-submerge them in either more water or some broth, bring them up to a boil, pile in my sliced well-cleaned greens (sometimes this takes a couple of iterations of piling in greens and covering until that lot wilts and makes room for more), add a dried red chile or two and a glug of wine vinegar, and simmer the whole thing covered for a good hour or two until the meat is falling from the bones and the greens are super-tender. Sometimes I add a chopped sweated onion before the long simmer starts, especially if I'm using water rather than broth. This really works best with tough and/or strong-flavored greens like the collards and mustard greens; kale and turnip greens are also great for this. Something really tender like spinach would probably turn into a grayish unpalatable mush with this kind of rough treatment.

[child of the storm]

Yep, last night was rapini...blanched first, then sauteed with olive oil, garlic, a bit of lemon zest, and a few chili flakes. Delicious served with trout and I felt like I was doing the best possible thing for my body. I need to eat more meals like that.

[kaneel]

I sautee my greens in a little oil, onion, garlic , a little scott bonnett pepper for flavor, salt and black pepper. Don't overcook ...that the key!!

[annachan]

I like my spinach in soup. Just heat up a can of chicken stock, add spinach and it's soup! Once in a while, I would beat up and egg or two and add that to the soup to make a spinach egg drop soup. I like Kale in soup as well, w/ sausage, potato, stock and cream.

I've been into chards lately as well. I really like the bag of rainbow chards at Trader Joes. I usually sautee up some garlic, shallot and/or onion w/ some chili flakes, add the chard and a little stock and cook until tender. Sometimes I like to add a little soy sauce and lemon juice at the end.

I also really like the Southern greens mix at Trader Joe's. I mae my greens somewhat traditionally. I like to start w/ making a broth w/ ham hock (sometimes I use fresh pork bones), water and stock. Then throw in some garlic, onion, chili flakes (depending on my mood) and greens and let it cook for about an hour. If I don't have time to deal w/ ham hock, I may sautee up some salt pork and add stock to it as my broth.

[McAuliflower]

For Winter Greens

- I like to pressure cooker the heck out of them with bacon bits, brown sugar and vinegar.

- pureed cooked greens with a touch of cream and parmesan.

- cooked greens stired into polenta.

For softer Salad Greens

- Rolling them up in softened rice wrappers with something salty (peanuts), something tangy (good squeeze of lime), something crunchy, and something sweet (mandarin orange slices)!

- I agree in that spinach can be pratically added to anything!

[raxelita]

I sautee swiss chard with chantrelles and serve on toasts topped with parm reggiano.

[lyagushka]

Chard and kale are popular in our house. They stand up nicely to longer cooking times without becoming stringy or mushy. Sauteed with olive oil plus garlic or onions is our most common treatment.

I also like to blanch savoy cabbage then slice it very thinly. I add the slices to a pan with very thinly sliced onions that have been cooked down until they just begin to caramelize. I throw in a generous pinch of caraway, and some salt. When the pan warms up again after the addition of the cabbage, I add some cream. When the liquid begins to bubble, it's ready to be served.

Kale or cavolo nero (should we be lucky enough to find it) also makes an excellent compliment to farro in a soup.

Broccoli is probably our all-time favorite vegetable. We most commonly eat it in a dish we fondly call "mofo." (The name of the dish came from the time back in the very early nineties when blackened everything was very popular. I asked a professional chef friend of mine how to blacken fish, since the blackening spices themselves didn't seem to be doing the trick. He was a skinny southern black guy, and gay as Christmas. He said to me, "Honey, you just gotta get that skillet hot as a muthafucka.") To make this dish, we prep a limited volume of meat, veg, tofu or whatever, and reduce stock to a very small quanity, keeping it warm. Then we take our 13" cast iron skillet and we get it hot as a muthafucka, by heating it on high over two gas burners for 10 minutes. When the pan is smoking a little, we add vegetable oil. When the oil smokes, after about 10 seconds, we throw in the food we've prepped. If we haven't prepped too much, the pan stays hot enough that the food never stops sizzling, so we have to stir constantly and the vegetables get nicely charred. After about 90 seconds, we throw in the hot reduced stock, or coconut milk or whatever. About 60 seconds after that, it's all done. Takes a bit of practice to know how much food is just enough and not too much, and the same goes for the amount of liquid. It's easy to prepare enough for two people with this method. Cooking for more could be tricky, unless you add rice or something else. Have a trivet ready if you want to take the pan to the table.

And then of course, there are salads...

[snowangel]

Lately, the big hit in this house has been ala Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet. Greens, a big mess of garlic (way more than they suggest) not finely chopped -- think smashed and chunked, with some Thai yellow bean paste and fish sauce. Another favorite is the Spinach with Charred Garlic from Barbara Tropp's Modern Art of Chinese Cooking (which I make with al sorts of different greens).

Leftover greens are a great lunch with a side of toast.

[KatieLoeb]

Tonight I'm making a big pot of Broccoli Rabe, Sausage and Chickpea soup. Good stuff for a frigid winter night.

edited to add:

I had two bowls for dinner, sprinkled with a bit of grated Parmesan. Very good and a recipe I'll defintely make again. It's THIS Rachael Ray recipe with a few minor substitutions. I used half hot and half sweet Italian sausage and two cans of chick peas because it's what I had in the house. Otherwise the recipe is the same.

[chemprof]

Folks from the American Southeast may find this kind of laughable, but I taught myself how to cook greens with hamhocks out of a cookbook (in my defense, it was this Kwanzaa cookbook, a most excellent compendium of cooking from all over the African diaspora). I start from the "Three mixed greens" recipe in that book, mainly using two rather than three varieties of greens, usually collards and mustard greens. I simmer a couple of hamhocks alone in water to cover for about 45 minutes first, discarding the water, to give the hocks a headstart and remove some of their excessive saltiness. I then re-submerge them in either more water or some broth, bring them up to a boil, pile in my sliced well-cleaned greens (sometimes this takes a couple of iterations of piling in greens and covering until that lot wilts and makes room for more), add a dried red chile or two and a glug of wine vinegar, and simmer the whole thing covered for a good hour or two until the meat is falling from the bones and the greens are super-tender. Sometimes I add a chopped sweated onion before the long simmer starts, especially if I'm using water rather than broth. This really works best with tough and/or strong-flavored greens like the collards and mustard greens; kale and turnip greens are also great for this. Something really tender like spinach would probably turn into a grayish unpalatable mush with this kind of rough treatment.

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MizDucky, don't throw away that hamhock broth! That's the best thing to cook the greens in! Of course I love country ham and can't imagine much that is too salty.

I learned to cook collards at the farmer's market from a lady who was trying to sell me some. It was much less intimidating once tried it! It's much like yours except that I saute onion or two w/ garlic and olive oil to add to the collards in the last step.

Anne

[mizducky]

MizDucky, don't throw away that hamhock broth!  That's the best thing to cook the greens in!  Of course I love country ham and can't imagine much that is too salty.

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Oh, I know I'm losing some flavor when I get rid of that first batch of hamhock broth, but I have a choice of either doing that, or never being able to eat hamhocks at all for fear of my feet and ankles puffing up like little dirigibles (which they *will* do, as I've discovered from painful experience ). Fortunately, the hocks still seem to have plenty of flavor (and saltiness) left even after that first round of simmering.

[gfron1]

My spouse was raised in Zambia where their staple was greens and thick soft polenta (using the polenta to pick up the greens). He uses kale or a heartier green and wilts to "still crisp" with a bit of water, then he adds a scoop of crunchy peanut butter (traditionally it would be ground nuts) and we eat away!

[JCD]

Chard pie from Laurel's Kitchen is seriously good.

Potatoes with escarole from Eating Well is the Best Revenge.

Plain old fresh picked and cleaned and spun dandelion greens with balsamic and EVOO and 'homegrowed red onion' are killer.

Stuffed chard, stuffed grape leaves.

Escarole and endive salad.....

Escarole also an easy one to grow, goes very well in soups.

Beet greens with garlic and EVOO.

There is also a recipe that I have tried, but not in recipie format.... it's spinach (or greens) cooked, squeezed dry, formed into little cylinders and popped into the mouth at will, dressed with what your imagination devises. I do that anyway in the spring, I never thought people do it for each other

Greens rock, just don't eat too much fresh spinach..

Edited January 17, 2006 by JCD (log)

[Mottmott]

Tonight? broccali rabe with angel hair spaghetti. I peeled the stems, chopped it into bite size pieces then sauteed it with garlic, topped with parm.

My favorite way of eating greens? chard pie with onions & raisins. I plan to try a chard/ricotta tart next. And of course many greens can be added to quiche.

I will often turn green vegetables into a soup, pureeing and sometimes adding either cream, gremelata, yogurt/garlic/herb, etc. Also, I find that most vegetable soups benefit from a spoonful of sherry vinegar to tweak it or a dash of cayenne. My most recent green soup adventure? kale. I sauteed the stems with the mirepoix, added chicken broth, reduced, reduced, reduced, then pureed it. Tasted it and found it good as is, but plan to eat it tomorrow with some of the kale leaves steamed into submission as a garnish and some beans, maybe adding a little cream. I will experiment with the leftovers by adding egg and pureed kale leaves making it into a little green custard appetizer.

Molly Stevens has a really nice braised endive and prosciutto recipe, and I plan to try Wolfert's Slow Cooking version with Banyuls vinegar next.

I find most greens benefit from steaming and eaten as is or dressed with a vinaigreete. Also: cabbage steamed in the microwave becomes incredibly sweet.

My favorite way of making green beans? blanching, then either sauteing with garlic or dressing with vinaigrette. Ditto asparagus.

And I'll add some of the other suggestions to my list of things to try. Thanks.

edited to add: Artichokes, best slathered in butter. Of course, you don't really eat the green part, so does that count?

Edited January 17, 2006 by Mottmott (log)

[MarketStEl]

MizDucky, don't throw away that hamhock broth!  That's the best thing to cook the greens in!  Of course I love country ham and can't imagine much that is too salty.

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Oh, I know I'm losing some flavor when I get rid of that first batch of hamhock broth, but I have a choice of either doing that, or never being able to eat hamhocks at all for fear of my feet and ankles puffing up like little dirigibles (which they *will* do, as I've discovered from painful experience ). Fortunately, the hocks still seem to have plenty of flavor (and saltiness) left even after that first round of simmering.

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BTW, there's a "low-fat" option for cooking greens Southern style now:

Smoked turkey parts.

Not quite the same flavor, but it's good in its own right. And you can eat the neck or butt as well.

I once bought some chard at Iovine's in the RTM and ended up discarding it because I couldn't figure out what to do with it. This thread has given me some ideas.

Edited to add: Oh, and one more thing--I know that broccoli is green, but even green cruciferous vegetables are not usually what I think of when I hear the word "greens." And broccoli is my favorite vegetable too.

Edited January 17, 2006 by MarketStEl (log)

[R.E. Turner]

I must've been about 20 when I moved "Up North" (Atlanta) and needed a good taste of home: my grandmother's mustard greens. I placed a long-distance call to ask for her recipe, and was given the following instructions, pretty much verbatim:

"Put your smoked pork (ham hocks, hambone, smoked knuckles, whatever,) into a large pot. Cover the pork with an inch or two of water, and boil it like hell while you clean your greens. Add the cleaned greens and cover with lid until the greens are done to your preference. Serve."

To this day, this is my preferred recipe -- slightly crunchy greens, served with hot cornbread, and pepper/vinegar sauce for those who need it. Mustard or cabbage are my personal favorites, but the preparation is equally good for collards, turnip greens, kale, etc.

Almost as good: A cream soup, started with a smoked pork stock. Add greens (collards would be my preference in this case, finely chopped;) a bit of cream; and thicken with finely ground cornmeal. A lovely cold-weather soup, in my book!

[PPPans]

Greens are my favourite!

Tender leaves of yard-long beans - sauteed with the beans and meat.

Sweet potato leaves (the tips) are simply steamed then dipped in spicy vinegar and bagoong (salted shrimp fry paste)

Several other greens like tender leaves of mango are shredded and put into a salsa-like preparation

Kangkong of course can be prepared any which way, from stews to soup

[vkn]

WOW! Thank you very much everone. I am quite overwhelmed now to see all of your wonderful responses for a simple post on Greens.

So many things to learn apart from my niching on traditional Indian home cooking, now I know. I am going to run back and read the posts once again and will get back to you one-on-one to clarify should I have any questions to ask on the recipes that you have mentioned here.

So, greens are everyone's favorite healthfood. Isn't it?

[lyagushka]

Edited to add: Oh, and one more thing--I know that broccoli is green, but even green cruciferous vegetables are not usually what I think of when I hear the word "greens."  And broccoli is my favorite vegetable too.

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Ah, but have you ever had the leafy parts of a broccoli plant? At one of the farmers' markets that I go to, they sell "baby" broccoli leaves. These grow around the crown of broccoli, and aren't like the florets. When they're small and tender, they're divine!

[Pontormo]

I never could understand why broccoli crowns were sold separately and snatched up since the stalks are what really makes the vegetable... The crowns are sort of the chicken breast of the plant while stalks are the thighs.

Because broccoli rabe has finally caught on in this country, farmers markets are branching out and offering lots of new varieties, especially the kinds you'll find in Asian grocery stores. A number have fairly small florets and long thin round stalks virtually hidden behind wide, tender leaves. This kind is something I'd call an honorary green, great in fried rice.

Elizabeth Schneider prefers the spelling "raab" and says it's closer to turnip than to broccoli, so...

I have to say that greens are one of the biggest delight to emerge from the convergence of whole natural foods/back to earth/California/vegetarianism/organic and farmers market developments.

Up north, never saw a mustard, turnip or any other green on my table...not even fresh spinach until I started cooking for myself, but I think of "greens" as vegetables in the kale family, especially.

My favorite is cavalo nero (of course) since it becomes so velvety after being blanched. Chard's up there too, especially braised for a long time with the stalks chopped up.

Leftover collards, because they're so good with cornbread, are also good with steaming mound of polenta.

Leftover greens are also great transformed into a simple gratin with fresh buttered crumbs. Drained, garlicky and chopped, they're a welcome change from a wimpy lettuce leaf on a sandwich made with sturdy dark bread....including grilled cheese.