Dear Reader,
Today's guest author, Erin Crosby Eckstine is an author of speculative historical fiction, personal essays, and anything else she's in the mood for. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Eckstine grew up between the South and Los Angeles before moving to New York City to attend Barnard College. She earned a master's in secondary English education from Stanford University and taught high school English for six years. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their cats.
Junie, Erin's debut novel, follows a young girl facing a life-altering decision after awakening her sister's ghost, navigating truths about love, friendship, and power as the Civil War looms.
You can touch base with Erin via her website: https://erincrosbyeckstine.com/
Welcome to the book club Erin...
Collard greens are essential to Black Southern food. Enslaved Africans, forced to make do with plantation scraps and their own gardens, adapted West African recipes to suit their needs. Black families relied on this dish during Jim Crow and post-slavery poverty. My grandparents grew up on neighboring farms in rural Alabama with at least eight people in their households, so it's no surprise their families relied on greens for sustenance. Now, they're my winter comfort food.
One of my relatives in Alabama is always growing collard, mustard, and turnip greens. When I was growing up, my family would harvest from a patch before the holidays, storing the bounty in the garage. 'The Bear' had nothing on my grandmother's kitchen rules, one of them being her specific cutting method for collard greens: rip the stem off the folded leaf, place the largest leaves at the base, form cigar-shaped rolls from these greens, and most crucially, slice them to pencil width. Wide-cut greens are harder to eat; partially why pre-cut greens are such a disaster. To this day, one of my proudest moments is when my grandmother told me I was the only one in the family who knew how to properly cut greens.
Southern greens use leftover pork, a legacy of slavery. Slow cooking made the meat palatable, providing protein otherwise unavailable to slaves. I use smoked turkey instead of pork since I don't eat red meat, and miso (my secret ingredient) and umami mushroom powder make a delicious meat substitute for vegans. If you like pork, the ham hocks are great. Non-vegetarian greens require homemade stock. Pour store-bought stock (chicken, pork, or turkey) over the smoked meat, and simmer until tender.
Slow cooking makes greens digestible and nutritious. Greens are not spinach; they take their time. I've found my Instant Pot's pressure cooker setting does a great job of speeding things up without sacrificing the flavor and texture. The stock and greens, once cooked together, better inform your seasoning choices. You will need salt, sugar, hot sauce, cayenne, miso, and garlic and/or onion powder. Season to taste; you'll know it's right when the umami taste activates those salivary glands. Sugar is key to authentic Southern greens. The key: balance the greens' bitterness without overly sweetening the broth.
After serving greens, you'll have a bunch of leftover liquid. This is the pot likker and is liquid gold in Southern culture. Drink it straight if you like, or freeze it for the next time you make greens. It's a great remedy for colds!
-- Erin Crosby Eckstine
https://erincrosbyeckstine.com/
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]
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