collard slaw

… aaaand we’re back.

Subscribing to a CSA means never knowing what you’re going to eat. (CSA is an Esperanto anagram for Pay First, Pick Up Later.) It’s like getting a mystery ingredient on a cooking show. You have to bend your kitchen skills to it. Chances are you’ll get a bunch of vegetables that you never cooked before, because they’re not what you’d normally buy. Say you never bought a bunch of kale at the Shop-N-Save. Sign up for a CSA, and you’ll have to figure out what to do with it. Same goes for turnips. Same goes for papalo, or it would, if anyone knew what to do with that stinky stuff. Use all of it and let nothing spoil by the time the next pickup rolls around, and you win a prize. I’m not sure what the prize is, because I haven’t won it. I suspect that it’s the kind of hearty good health that involves a lot of trotting.

One thing I’ve been faced with from my CSA is a wealth of collards. Now, collard greens have a long history in this country. It’s been argued that, were it not for the deft ways with such greens of deracinated African cooks, white Southern slaveholders might’ve died young of poor nutrition. Let no one say that the relatives of the cabbage are without iron, or irony. One thing you can count on with a summer full of collards, is that people will complain about it. No one wants to stand over a hot stove in late August or early September, stirring the collards in boiling water or fat. I have a solution for that: cook them without heat. Collards are cabbage and cabbage mixed with vinaigrette makes cole slaw, so make a slaw of the collards and let the acid do the cooking.

Start at least an hour ahead of dinner.
Shred up your collards, into eighth-inch strips. Remove the tough central spine if you prefer; but it is edible, so, if you’re a completist with good teeth, you’re free to leave them in.
For a milder taste, soak the shredded leaves in cold water for a few minutes, then drain and dry them. This is easily accomplished in a salad spinner. For the full-on taste experience, skip this step.
Slice an onion in half through the stem, peel it, and slice crosswise into thin crescents. Half a baseball-sized onion per pound of collards is plenty. Combine with the greens.
You can add shredded carrot, or whatever else. This time, I put in some bok choy and turnip greens, also from the CSA, and a refugee tomato from my blight-stricken backyard vines, because they were there.
Mince up a clove of garlic, and toss it in there, too.
Make a strong vinaigrette, about three parts wine or cider vinegar to two parts olive oil. Beat until emulsified, pour over the greens. Add a little salt, maybe a teaspoon to the pound, not as much as you’d think. Add a little sugar, maybe a tablespoon. Add a little black pepper, a dozen grinds worth. Add whatever seasoning you like. Me, I like fennel seeds, a lot of them. Mix thoroughly. The mixture should be a bit wet: think overdressed salad. I like to do this in a big bowl, set a small plate on top of the greens, and weight it. I don’t know if this accomplishes anything, but it looks cool.
If you’re making the slaw an hour or so ahead of dinner, leave it on the counter. If you’re making it a day ahead, stick it in the fridge. You’ll actually have room in there, now that you’ve used all those collards.
While you’re not looking, the vinegar, oil, and salt will go to work on the tough collards, turning them into slightly-less-tough, semi-pickled greens. It’s not all the way to sauerkraut, as no fermentation is involved. I think of it as soggy salad, but it’s snappier than that sounds. It’s slaw.
Before you eat it, drain out some of the liquid. If you’re into keeping it, use it wherever pungently cabbagey vinaigrettes are called for. If you’re me, that’s on buttered bread.
Serve the slaw as a side-dish, with a protein and starch of your choice. It goes great with bread and hard boiled eggs, on burgers, or with the guilty fried chicken from the place down the street. Not that I know anything about that, not that I was there, and not that you can pin anything on me.