Orzotto with Braised Collards

One side effect of becoming obsessed with vegetables is that every now and then—surely no more than five times a week—I forget to consider the rest of the meal. For example, sometimes I start thinking about collard greens, and then I can't think of anything else. Or if I do manage to consider other food groups, they pale in comparison. "Collard greens," I say to myself. "And lentils?" asks a small, distant, entirely irrelevant voice in my head. "COLLARD GREENS," I repeat, out loud, more firmly this time. "Um, well, actually," says the person standing next to me at the co-op, where I stand gazing longingly at the leafy vegetable section, "I was just hoping to squeeze past you to get some carrots."

The point being, I buy the collard greens, I speed home to cook the collard greens, and somewhere halfway through slicing them, it occurs to me that they may not actually make up an entire dinner all by themselves.

Fortunately, I am an experienced cupboard forager. Which in this case turned up orzo and butter beans. The result? Rich, satisfying, collard greeny pasta perfection.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 large red onion, halved and sliced fairly thinly

2 strips Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon, sliced into strips

3 large cloves garlic, pressed or minced

1 bunch collard greens, halved lengthwise and sliced into one-inch strips*

Salt & pepper, to taste

1 loose tbsp finely chopped oregano

1/3 cup chicken broth + 1 1/4 cups chicken broth

1 1/2 rounded cups whole wheat orzo pasta

1 can butter beans, rinsed and drained**

Parmesan (optional)

Sauté onions over medium-high heat in a wide pan with a little olive oil for a minute or so, until they begin to cook down a little. Push to one side and add the bacon to the other. Cook until the bacon begins to brown a little, turning the onions over once or twice in the meantime. Stir to combine, and continue cooking until until the onions are golden. Add the garlic, turn heat to medium, and saute for one minute more. Add the greens and salt and cook, stirring, for two more minutes, then add the oregano and 1/3 cup broth and bring to a boil. Turn heat to medium-low, cover, and cook for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding a little water if it starts to dry out.

About 15 minutes before the collards are done, start the 1 1/4 cups of broth heating in a small pot. Bring to a boil.

When there are about 10 minutes left, add the butter beans to the collard greens and stir to combine. Replace the cover. Add the orzo to the broth, turn the heat down to low, and simmer for 9 minutes or according to package directions, stirring once in the middle. Uncover, stir, and simmer off any excess broth. Fold the pasta into the collard greens.

Add a little grated Parmesan if desired, top with black pepper, and serve warm (too hot and you'll lose some of the flavor).

Serves 3.

*If you have a particularly small bunch of collard greens, you can add about 1/2 cup of frozen kale or spinach when you add the butter beans if you want a little more green.
**World Market has Italian butter beans that are much more giant, fat, and buttery than the normal butter beans you find in the supermarket. They are particularly amazing in pastas and pasta salads. They are also not remotely local or BPA-free, so I'm not recommending them, I'm just objectively describing their tendency to make my tastebuds swoon with happiness.

Sukuma Wiki: Kenyan Braised Sweet Potatoes and Collard Greens

The husband has been cooking up a storm while he's on his own in the wild midwest. Recently, he adapted a recipe from our Kansas produce box for Sukuma Wiki, a common Kenyan dish of braised collard greens. In Swahili, sukuma wiki literally means "stretch the week," and this dish is surprisingly filling (in addition to being deeply delicious).

And, when we each cook it in our respective kitchens for a Skype dinner date, it can stretch the week from here to Kansas City.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 medium to large red onion, chopped
1 jalapeno, minced
1 large Japanese sweet potato (about 12 oz.), peeled and diced
1 bunch collard greens, lower half of the stems removed, coarsely chopped
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 to 1 1/2 cups diced Roma tomatoes
Dash or six ground cumin
Scant 1/4 tsp turmeric
1 cup veggie broth
Freshly ground white pepper to taste

Heat a deep saute pan (one that has a lid) over medium heat. When hot, add a generous glug of olive oil. Add the onion and saute, stirring, until it turns translucent, then add the jalapeno and saute a couple minutes more.

Stir in the sweet potato and continue to saute, stirring occasionally, until golden brown in places. Next, add collard greens by the handful, stirring to coat. Sprinkle in the salt, and continue to cook for another 5-7 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Add the garlic, tomatoes, cumin, turmeric, and broth. Stir, cover, and reduce the heat to low or medium-low (you want to end up with a strong simmer). Cook for 40 minutes, stirring every 10-15, until the collard greens are very tender and the kitchen smells amazing.

Adjust seasonings to taste, top with freshly ground white pepper, and serve warm.

Serves 2-4.

Risotto with Winter Squash, Bacon, and Sage

The brilliant thing about risotto, besides the obvious fact that cooking it involves one hand for stirring and leaves the other free to hold a glass of wine, is that it allows you to combine an irresponsibly large number of your favorite ingredients into a single dish. A single awesome, delicious, not-sure-I-actually-made-enough-for-both-of-us-tonight-honey sort of dish.

For instance. I love bacon. Love seems like too mild a word, but we'll go with it. And I love squash. Deeply love. And I've recently been on a southern greens kick. Especially when they're around bacon. And then there are assorted minor ingredients that I feel oddly passionate about, like sage and shallot and lemon zest.

So when I found all these things in my fridge tonight, I had a warm fuzzy feeling that good things were about to happen. 

We had baby red mustard greens from our produce box that I added just before the risotto was finished, but if you're using big-leafed greens, it's probably better to add them all earlier, which is what I wrote here. You should be able to substitute or add collard greens. Or throw in some baby arugula near the end...really anything with a little bit of a kick should work well.

Ingredients
2 cups veggie broth (new favorite: Imagine has a mere 9 ingredients, all recognizable, and comes in a low sodium version that avoids the whole wildly oversalted risotto thing)
Olive oil
Rounded 1/2 cup chopped shallot
1 cup Arborio rice
2 cups diced winter squash (heirloom or butternut)
White wine
Several big handfuls of turnip and mustard greens, sliced or chopped
1 tbsp sage that's been sliced crosswise into thin ribbons
2 strips Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon (else pancetta), cut crosswise into strips
Zest of 1 lemon
Coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano

Heat broth in a small pot over medium heat until it simmers, then turn off heat and leave covered to keep warm.

In a large pot, heat a glug of olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallot and saute for several minutes until soft, then add the rice and squash and stir to coat evenly. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about three minutes (the mixture should start to smell fragrant and toasty). Add a ladleful of white wine and continue to cook, stirring, until the liquid has been absorbed. Start adding the broth, a ladleful at a time, stirring occasionally and allowing it to be absorbed each time before adding more. After the second ladleful of broth, add the greens to the rice, and continue cooking as before.

When the rice is almost tender, heat a small pan over medium high heat, add the bacon, and cook until lightly brown on all sides. Add the sage, stir once or twice, and turn off the heat. Drain most (but not all) of the excess bacon grease out of the pan.

When the rice is tender (which should be just about when all the broth has been added), toss in the lemon zest, pour in the bacon-sage mixture, and sprinkle liberally with freshly ground black pepper. Stir together, and turn off the heat. Add the parmesan, stir, and serve hot.

Serves 2-3.

Tip: If your risotto has to sit for awhile, because, for example, one person in your party was unavoidably detained at the hospital despite ASSURING you that he would be back momentarily, or because you put it in the fridge to have leftovers the next day, you can reconstitute it by adding a little bit of broth before reheating (it tends to dry out when it sits for too long, but perks back up with a little more broth).

Collard Greens with Applewood Smoked Bacon

This recipe can be made with or without bacon. But, once you have the version with bacon, you're probably not going back, so if you for some reason want to try it both ways, do the non-bacon version first. (However, having just had the with-bacon version, suggesting anything of the sort seems a bit sacrilegious. Make it with the bacon. With with with.)

Ingredients
1 onion, halved and sliced fairly thinly

2 strips Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon (optional but highly recommended), sliced into strips
2 large cloves garlic, pressed

1 bunch collard greens, sliced into one-inch strips

Olive oil

Several shakes crushed ñora pepper (available at Spanish food stores, like The Spanish Table)

Salt & pepper, to taste

1 loose tbsp finely chopped oregano

1/3 cup chicken broth

Saute onions over medium-high heat in a big pan with a little olive oil for a minute or so, until they begin to cook down a little. Push to the side and add the bacon, centering it over the heat. Cook until it begins to brown a little, turning the onions over once or twice in the meantime. When you lose patience with this silly way of cooking both at once, just stir to combine, and continue cooking until until the onions are golden. Add the garlic, turn heat to medium, and saute for one minute more. Add the greens and salt and cook, stirring, for two more minutes, then add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil. Turn heat to medium-low, cover, and cook for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding a little water if it starts to dry out.

Serves 2 greedy people but could stretch to 3, if you're less prone to using forks to defend your right to half the bacon than some people in our household. Goes well with quinoa with carrots and pepper (below) and grilled summer squash.