Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Green Georgia Collards

so....ooopss...i made a wonderful dinner Sunday night for my dad and his fiance *weird calling her that* - i started taking pictures of what i was making- but low and behold...as it often does- the beer was a'flowin' and i forgot to take some pictures- so here is what i did, lots of captions- not as many pictures

So we have collards, diamond squash, and rib-eyes *not seen here*
1. stem collards by gently pulling the stem from the leaves and swirling them in a tub of water to remove grit
2. dice bacon into small-ish pieces, because you want to render the fat, place in the pot you want to cook in- over medium heat- make sure you are moving them around often
3. slice onion into crescents- or desired shape *one onion per bunch of collards
4. dice up your can of tomatoes- or open your can of diced tomatoes
5. add oil to the bacon, then add the onions---SALT, add SALT here....stir the onions till coated nicely with the fat and allow them to become translucent- 5 minutes?-ish
6. add tomatoes- SALT/PEPPER- stir well
7. add collards- cover with water *ADD SALT**
*cook at a simmer until tender--about 1.5 hours or 2...
the bacon fat will flavor the collard cooking water- which will soon become pot liquor
be sure to taste the pot liquor throughout the cooking process- do not hesitate to add salt


next is our diamond squash- which i have never heard of, but seems to be just baby acorn squash
this is a very similar cooking method to the spaghetti squash
1. preheat oven to 350*
2. split squash in half + remove seeds
3. salt liberally and pepper, add 1 pat of butter to the cavern in the squash
4. place on foiled baking sheet
5. bake until tender *about 1 hour
to serve you will put the whole half of the squash on the plate and allow each person to pull
the squash flesh into the center of the squash as they want




and the rib-eyes...nom nom nom
1. preheat the grill for about 15 minutes before you are ready to cook *30 minutes before the meal
2. pull out your steaks and heavily salt and pepper, and rub with olive oil-
you want these to be at room temperature- it will allow the meat to cook more evenly, as
there will be no cold spots
3. place on a hot hot hot grill- after 4 minutes rotate the steak 90*- this results in
the super cool "x" marks on your steak
4. flip the steaks after another 3 or 4 minutes- let the steaks cook on the second side for another
6 minutes or so- this will result in an approximate medium-rare/rare
5. rest the steaks for 5 minutes before cutting into them- this allows the juices to redistribute
evenly throughout the piece of heaven... 

collards are pretty close to done...taste to be sure your greens are tender enough

dinner.


*can anyone tell me how to to make my pictures less yellow?...

1 comment:

  1. I'm always nervous to cook greens, afraid they will come out bitter or bland as I don't eat meat! Have any suggestions to flavor greens without meat? Also, I think if you reduce the color temperature in a photo editing program they should be less yellow!

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