For as long as I can remember, I've made Deborah Madison's Braised Collards on New Year's Day, with her Southern Style Black-Eyed Peas alongside. So when my mom asked for the recipe late last year, I thought it'd be easy enough to just send her a link to my blog.
Deborah Madison's Celery Root Chowder is a favorite of ours, I make it every winter when celery roots are in our CSA box. This time I served it with some fresh bread from the bakery, soft ripened cheese, and pâté, for my husband's birthday. Pâté is one of his favorite things that we almost never eat. We also almost never have Manhattans with dinner.
This is my favorite recent trifecta (or triple win): Mexican Green Rice, Lazy Chiles Rellenos, Yellow Indian Woman beans. I only wish my kids loved it as much as I do. They routinely ask for the beans by name and always manage to choke down a bite each of the rice and rellenos, so I'll call it good.
We make these semi-spicy peas to serve alongside collard greens every New Year's Day. Today I made them because collards came in last week's CSA box, not to celebrate the new year.
We have made this recipe every New Year's Day for at least a decade, along with every other day that we happen to have collard greens. Like when they come in the CSA box, as they did last week.
This is my family's new favorite noodle recipe, from Vegetable Literacy. It is supposed to be made with kale, but tonight I only had a few leaves of usable kale, a handful of beet greens and a small cabbage. So I washed all the leaves, greens and half of the cabbage, rolled them up, sliced them thin, crumpled them up with salt and oil like the recipe says and proceeded with dinner.
Steamed young potatoes simply dressed with butter, tarragon, parsley and salt are really delicious. This is the way to prepare them when they are fresh dug out of dark, damp spring earth and still retain the dewiness of youth that later, larger potatoes lose as they age.
This is one of those recipes that sounds too simple to be good. But, it is actually incredibly delicious. Any type of mustard greens works: red, green, curly, flat. Or a mix. Simply sauté some sliced garlic in a little peanut oil, them add the mustard greens. Cook for a few minutes until they are as wilted as you like them to be and sprinkle chopped peanuts on top.
These little pancakes are a perfect way to use up chard when you don't feel like eating chard. Or feed it to your kids, when you know they won't want to eat it otherwise.
Favas and asparagus make a delicious combination that tastes like spring. This recipe, p. 275, is a template for a lettuce-less salad that can highlight almost any vegetables from this season. The magic here is in the dressing: lemon, olive oil, capers and lots of herbs. Makes a great dinner with a roast chicken and Madison's Toasted Millet "Polenta".
Another great way to use one of the more challenging items that comes in our CSA box: cabbage. I adore cabbage, but my kids do not. Combining it with delicious crusty potatoes, a little dill (both were also in last week's box) and a sprinkling of mild, salty, cheese makes it easy to eat.
Surprisingly delicious, this sauce makes steamed sweet potatoes into something really special. It is now one of my favorite ways to eat them, a close second to plopping slices on the top of a tagine. But this recipe is easier than the tagine and makes a great quick dinner with brown rice and sautéed greens. I added sautéed boneless chicken thighs to my kids' plates.