One of the food vendors at the Green Festival yesterday was selling a fixed plate of vegetarian Southern fare: collards, macaroni and cheese, and corn bread. I was scared away by the long lines, but it looked so delicious that the meal stuck in my mind, and I decided to make something similar tonight.
I’ll admit, I’m a northern girl through and through. I haven’t spent much time in the South, and I’m not sure I’ve ever had properly prepared Southern-style collards, so I don’t have a basis of comparison for this dish. Really traditional collards involve cooking them in bacon fat, which is obviously a no-go for vegetarians. I’ve always heard people rave about collards, or talk about them with great nostalgia, so I was eager to try something close enough to give me an idea of why everyone was so excited.
I adapted this recipe from the braised collards recipe in Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” (my standard for vegetarian recipes – highly recommended), with some significant changes: I add seitan to fill up the void left by bacon, and instead of brown butter (which I think involves cooking butter very slowly for a very long time) I just used plain old butter. How can you go wrong when you cook things in butter? Whether or not it tastes like the real thing, I thought it was delicious. I served it with corn bread.
I’d love feedback: if you make this, do you think it’s a fair approximation? What, short of animal fat, would bring it closer?
Collards and Seitan, Southern Style
- 8 oz. seitan, cut into bite-sized pieces
- 1/2 – 3/4 lb fresh collard greens
- 2 cloves garlic
- 3 tb butter
- salt
- Wash greens and cut or tear into pieces, removing the tough stems and ribs.
- Put greens and seitan into a pot of boiling water, and boil for about 10 minutes. Drain off most of the liquid, leaving 1/2 cup or less, and remove from heat.
- Slice the garlic, and saute in melted butter until soft and the butter starts to brown.
- Add greens and seitan. Simmer for about 15 minutes to let the flavors meld.
- Enjoy!