hoppin’ john

How to Cook Collard Greens: A Heretical Recipe

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Collard_greens
I have never liked collard greens, but I felt like I needed to serve them on New Year’s Day. I’m superstitious, and I didn’t want to do anything to risk the good luck that a meal of black-eyed peas and collard greens allegedly brings.

I cooked my Hoppin’ John early in the day, but I procrastinated on the greens. Shortly before the party, I did a quick Google search to learn how to cook them, and I panicked. Paula Deen’s recipe was one of the first hits—it called for cooking them two hours. So did a bunch of other recipes. I didn’t have that kind of time, and besides, what were these people thinking? Two hours? How can any vegetable cooked that long taste good?

As you may know, my Fly Sky High Kale Salad has been a huge hit lately, and I’m sure that part of the success of that recipe comes from cutting the green into a chiffonade. The leaf of the collard green appeared similar to that of the kale, so I figured that long thin strips would be a good place to start. Also, I was sure it would help them cook faster.

I’ve found that with the kale, the less it is cooked, the better it tastes, and I suspected this might be true of the collards, too. But I had never previously prepared collards, and I became concerned that there might be a reason they needed to be cooked two hours. Maybe there was a naturally occurring chemical compound that had to be sweated out (the way manioc must be soaked then cooked to make a delicious farofa to garnish feijoada). Maybe they were indigestible unless stewed for an ungodly amount of time. Maybe they were poisonous unless prepared properly, like blowfish, I thought. So I Googled “raw collard green salad,” saw a bunch of recipes, and concluded that I didn’t need to worry. A quick sauté was the answer.

In a nod to the South, though, I cooked the greens in bacon. And it was just my luck that they turned out delicious. Santa Maria called them “a revelation.”

Heretical Collard Greens

  • 1 strip of smoked bacon, diced
  • 1 head collard greens, washed and cut into a chiffonade

Heat a large frying pan and render the bacon until it is crispy.

Toss in the greens and stir around a bit on high heat until they taste good. Not long, just a few minutes.

Cooking Up Good Fortune: A Hoppin’ John Recipe

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Black-eyed_peas_feast
According to Southern tradition, eating a Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day brings good luck, so I made one on Saturday. I’ve lived enough of a charmed life to never really know an annus horrribilis (aside from, perhaps, 7th Grade), but last year comes close to qualifying.

It started in January with a “Notice of Termination,” a thirty-day legal-order to vacate our apartment, or face eviction. This was followed by months of anxiety, and a mad scramble to find a new place. Just about every weekend was taken up with house hunting. A great lawyer and the generosity of the New York City Housing Court gave us some breathing room, but we didn’t reach a settlement until the middle of the year.

Looking for a home was a nightmare. I could fill a book with stories about termites, double-dealing realtors, bidding wars, and heartbreaking legal advice. And, speaking of books, in the midst of this never-ending quest, I was keeping a frantic pace editing the manuscript for “Man with a Pan,” my forthcoming anthology about fathers who cook, featuring contributions from the likes of Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Mark Kurlansky, and Stephen King. More than once this past spring I dashed from my full-time job (at lunch hour) to visit a prospective school for Nina and Pinta, and spent the subway trip with a red pencil and an essay. 

Finally, this summer and fall, my mother-in-law fell while visiting not once, but twice, breaking her nose on one occasion and shattering her shoulder on another. The search for a home, the constant need to work two jobs, and the health issues of my mother-in-law put an enormous strain on our family. It’s been hard.

But now the book is more-or-less finished, we’re about to move, and Santa Maria’s mother is on the mend. Things are looking up, and to help give them a boost, I made that Hoppin’ John for my mother, my sisters and their spouses and kids, and two of my maternal aunts.

I’m an ignorant suburban boy when it comes to Southern food (as my previous posts attest), but I don’t believe in living in fear. So what, if I’ve never made Southern food before? I figured I could wing it. I turned to Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” (the iPod app) and combined it with a little bit of what Abe de la Houssaye so generously shared, and used some common sense.

The Hoppin’ John was sublime. The black-eyed peas were smoother and more tender than I ever could have expected, and Bittman’s suggestion to season it with fresh rosemary gave it a nice tingle. I forgot to serve the dish with Tabasco sauce, but no one complained. My family’s of Irish descent (with the exception of my brother-in-laws, one of whom is from Texas), so they have even less experience with Southern food than I do. They all loved it. I accompanied it with slices of baked Amish ham, steamed green beans, sweet potatoes, cornbread, and collard greens.

I’ve always hated collard greens so I cooked them my way. I’m sure a Southerner would find it heretical, but my sister who is married to the Texan said they were the best she’d ever had. Y'all come back tomorrow to hear how I did those.

One Northerner's Take on the Traditional Hoppin' John

  • 4 slices smoked bacon, diced
  • 2 onions, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, choped
  • 1 ham hock
  • 3 cups black-eyed peas
  • 1-2 cups turkey or chicken stock
  • 2-3 sprigs fresh rosemary

In a large stockpot render the bacon and saute the onions until they are translucent.

Add the garlic and cook for three or four minutes more.

Toss in the peas and the ham hock and the stock and rosemary.

Add enough water to cover the beans and ham hock.

Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer.

Cook for a couple of hours, or until the peas are tender.

Salt to taste.

Notes: I forgot to soak the peas overnight, and only soaked them for about two hours before cooking. I used turkey stock because that's what my mother had on hand. The amount is a guess. Use as much as you'd like. I don't really know how long I cooked them for because I took Nina and Pinta sledding while they were cooking. If you leave yourself enough time, you really can't go wrong with this dish.

Hoppin’ Mad

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Like my darling Pinta, I can have a hard time pronouncing things, or in my case, writing them, as a friend of mine, the Charleston-born writer Jack Hitt, pointed out about the New Year’s Day Black-Eyed Peas post.

I got myself into trouble, apparently, with my suggestion that it had anything to do with another famous Southern dish of a certain name. “I think it's safe to say that the phrase has always been rendered, without affectation, as 'Hoppin' John.'" Hitt told me. "To even say the ‘g’ is to sound like someone referring to chitlins as chitterlings.”

“I'm pretty sure the first mention of Hoppin' John is was in a Carolina cookbook,” he continued, “and around Charleston anyway, the story, according to various sources on the Internet, is that “the dish goes back at least as far as 1841, when, according to tradition, it was hawked in the streets of Charleston, South Carolina by a crippled black man who was know as Hoppin' John."

“I've cooked these things all my life, and the key feature is to cook the peas (typically field peas, by the way, not black-eyed peas) and then reserve the 'pea likker' to cook the rice in,” he said.  “Most people cook the rice right in with the beans, but I have always found it easier to cook the rice in several cups of salty pea ‘likker’ and then fold the cooked beans back in.” He also prefers white long-grain rice to brown. And, he says, the rice and beans and collards should be presented together at the end.

“What your writer's talking about is just cooking typical Cajun, spicy black-eyed peas,” he summed up, “and I suspect anyone who's ever made Hoppin' John will react with cries of heresy and calls for blood.”

That hasn’t happened yet, but one reader did wonder if the he should use smoked or fresh ham hocks in the recipe. The answer is smoked—I’ve amended the recipe.