Collard Greens have many faces

Yesterday I had the joy of trying my first Collard Greens. On first glance I was a little taken aback. The large, firm leafy greens kind of reminded me of tobacco leaves. (of course I've only seen tobacco leaves from afar, hanging to dry in Kentucky barns, but this is what I thought it would look and feel like close up.)

Lucky for me the people at Fair Shares know their food and take pride is sharing ways to use it. Yesterday Kevin walked me through my share, and when asked, gave me a few ways to use the collard greens.

First he explained the need to thoroughly clean the greens to get all the sand and dirt out. Then he said you need to cut the stems out of the greens because they are rather hard. (He recommended I save the stems for future vegetable stocks, but I just can't bring myself to think that far ahead. Mine went down the disposal.)

The first suggestion use was probably my favorite -- collard chips. (see photo above.) After cleaning and de-stemming, I cut the leaves into quarters, laid them on a cookie sheet, drizzled with olive oil and salt and placed them in a 450 degree oven for about 3 minutes. They came out light and airy, like a potato chip, and were rather fun to munch on. The 16 year old didn't care for them, but the 12 year old did -- and she is usually the harder one to please.

The second suggested use was to add the greens to a spaghetti sauce. I bought a quart of canned tomatoes at Fair Shares, sauted some garlic, added some seasoning (fennel, oregeno, tarragon, salt and pepper) and red wine simmered for about 15 minutes. I then added chopped collard greens, some of last weeks pea shoots, and some of this weeks mushrooms and simmered another 10-15 minutes. The end result was a nice fresh sauce to serve over some locally made pasta.


This weeks fair share meal included bread from Black Bear Bakery, collard green chips, locally made pasta, fresh mozzarella made from local goat milk and a pasta sauce made with all locally grown ingredients.
All the sauce got eaten, but I'm not sure the girls want it again soon. Katie took out the mushrooms and Molly just dipped her bread in it. We had locally grown strawberries for desert, but no one was really hungry enough to want a desert. The meal was very filling.

Tonight I move on to the lamb. I'm thinking lamb patties with a mint pesto sauce, made from the locally grown mint in the share this week.