Collard Greens, Rednecks and California

I've been bantering back and forth at another blog with somebody who thinks Bay Area folk are too anti-redneck to eat collard greens. He just doesn't know the Bay Area. Our climate favors winter greens and you can get collards fresh, frozen, canned, pre-washed and cut, organic, Italian, you name it. My interlocutor also claims that yuppies would never put a sofa in the front yard; I answer with the Pottery Barn catalog of upscale outdoor furniture. He says outdoor clotheslines are redneck, I say the yuppie environmentalists all want them. He says folk here are too health-conscious to eat fatback, I answer that foodies have moved on and are totally into meat and fat, albeit sustainably grown, hormone and nitrite-free.

This commenter, calling himself Roger Bigod, says we in Northern California would not want to eat collard greens with fatback cooked in an iron pot over a wood fire. I say that dish sounds like the next big Berkeley Slow Food hit. Here's the recipe:

Recipes.

COLLARD GREENS

3 c. water

1 ham hock

1 tbs. sugar

1 tsp.. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

3-4 bunches collard greens. Can also use mustard or other greens.

Put water and ham hock into pot and hang over fire to boil. Then move off the fire a little and let it to simmer for an hour or so. Wash the greens with good water, cold if possible. Tear stem off each leaf and tear remainder up into bite sized pieces. Check ham hock; if too much water is boiled off add enough to cover it again and move pan further off the fire next time. When everything is up to a simmer again add the greens, salt pepper and sugar. Simmer 45 min. to an hour or until greens are tender enough to eat.

Now I just have to get an iron Dutch oven and figure out how to build a fire outdoors. We don't have to call this redneck cooking, we can call it American Slow Food.

Oh yes, and fried chicken? Fried chicken has been the must-eat yuppie foodie dish for at least two years. Here's a Chez Panisse-derived fried chicken recipe that sells out every day at Bake Sale Betty's in Oakland. Don't forget to drink your boxed Pinot Grigio with it. Or sweetened iced tea.

Comments

[Leila Abu-Saba]

I'm totally eliding the African-American cuisine aspect to Bay Area cooking. It's easy to find collards here because we have lots of African-Americans who cook Southern food. It turns out that my neighborhood also used to be full of "Okies", working-class white people from the Dust Bowl migration, mostly Southern. They eat greens and fatback, too. But Southern food today in the Bay Area is the province of African-Americans, who run many popular barbecue restaurants, along with attendant bottled barbecue sauce sales.

When my husband came with me to North Carolina he was really surprised to eat at a barbecue place where the staff and cooks were all white. He didn't know that white people did barbecue.

Anyway, to call this food redneck (implying white people) is like calling hummus and falafel Israeli food. I have to be careful about culinary colonialism...

[Roger Bigod]

Check out a book on West African cuisine. Lots of fried food (with a more delicate crust than the Southern standard), lots of vegetables overcooked by European standards. But for greens, you have to cook it a long time to make it edible.

So both practices are probably from Africa, but have diffused to Southern whites in general.

I'm surprised that redneck food is chic, but the Bay Area has had more unlikely fads.

[Ericka]

YUM. This foodie (or "fooderati" as it's now called) is salivating over your recipe. I'm all about the fatback, the greens, and ... not mentioned ... the grits.

[Alison Chaiken]

I have actually eaten collards this very week, although I stir-fried them with garlic, salt and EVOO rather than adding fatback. Fatback is not in my refrigerator, I must confess!

[Leila Abu-Saba]

If not fatback, Alison, how about pancetta?

PS I impressed my friend's husband mightily at the chemo ward, thanks to you. Two weeks ago or more I told them about the MIT solar battery discovery. They are both MIT grads, scientists. The husband was working on his laptop and seemed completely uninterested. Yesterday he greeted me with big smiles, made lots of eye contact, chatted me up. He'd received an email from MIT confirming everything I had told him and now he thinks I am very smart. (He said so). I said I have smart friends and pay attention to what they tell me...

[Alison Chaiken]

You are too modest. If we didn't think that you were smart and a source of fascinating information, we couldn't be bothered to tell you anything! I've learned a lot by reading your blog and feel pleased to share. I owe you for the recipes, if nothing else!