A Recipe for Saag-Style Collard Greens
From Vishwesh Bhatt's "I Am From Here" (plus my thoughts on culinary crossroads)
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In 1994, Wayne Hu of West Bloomfield, Michigan charmed the judges of the Pillsbury Bake-Off with his recipe for Chinese pork buns (not to mention, won $2000 in prize money)—made by tucking traditional char siu filling into Pillsbury refrigerated buttermilk biscuit dough. He’d left China at the peak of World War II to settle in the United States and pursue a degree in structural engineering. When he wasn’t in class or studying for exams, he was in the kitchen cooking the dishes he knew and loved—tweaking his recipes based on ingredients available to him and streamlining them to fit his busy student schedule.
Yia Vang, a Hmong chef based in Minneapolis, introduced Hmong-Midwestern mash-up dishes through pop-ups with his restaurant, Union Hmong Kitchen. If it wasn’t a cheesy tater tot casserole jazzed up with coconut red curry, roasted vegetables, fish sauce, and fresh lime, it was a layered chopped salad with fresh romaine, radishes, and ranch (as Midwestern of a condiment as you can get) with some extra embellishments that included boiled eggs, Aji-No-Moto umami seasoning (MSG), and a variety of herbs like Thai basil, dill, and cilantro. (If you’re an OG subscriber, you also know that the talented Mike Sula wrote a piece about this salad for a previous iteration of this newsletter. Also, spoiler alert: Yia might be making an appearance on “That One Dish” sometime soon …)
And hey, I’ll say it: as a child I’d sometimes ladle my mother’s beef curry over a plate of rice noodles and sprinkle a generous amount of grated parmesan cheese over it—just as you would a plate of spaghetti and meatballs, which also happened to be one of my most favorite childhood dishes. To this day, it’s a dish that’ll appear every once in a while in my meal rotations when I need a hit of nostalgia.
I’ve always found stories and recipes from immigrant families learning to survive and thrive in the United States fascinating. The dishes they make at home aren’t necessarily authentic to their motherland, but authentic to what ingredients they have around them and the city or town they’ve settled in—thus carrying on their heritage in ways that are unique to them that they can share with future generations. These new recipes that emerge are the manifestation of where a person comes from and where they’re currently at, rooted simultaneously in tradition and innovation. I’ve found myself becoming more and more interested in how first- and especially second-generation Americans like myself are cooking—and how we’re taking flavors and dishes we grew up with, making them our own, and standing proudly behind them. Maybe it’s a segment I’ll flesh out in later posts, who knows. (I’m still trying to figure out Substack and am getting used to writing this newsletter).
Anyway, I’d been thinking about all this the other day as I re-read Vishwesh Bhatt’s “I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef”—which, by the way, won a James Beard award this year in the Foodways category, NBD. Vishwesh, who hails from Gujarat and now lives in Oxford, Mississippi, is the executive chef at Snackbar, and has developed a menu that intertwines both Southern and Indian foodways. The recipes in his cookbook/memoir speak to how, despite Gujarat and Mississippi being on totally different sides of the world, there are still interesting parallels between their respective foodways in that staples include okra, lima beans, fresh tomatoes, and black-eyed peas, to name a few. All that to say, today I’ll be sharing a recipe for Vishwesh’s saag-style collards. Collard greens are a common player in Southern cooking, and here Bhatt uses it in lieu of the spinach or mustard greens you’d normally find in a saag. As he wrote in his headnote, serving this saag with makki ki roti (a flatbread made with corn flour) is a play on greens and cornbread—basically as Southern of a meal as you can get.
Also, because I’m feeling particularly generous this week, tomorrow I’ll also be sending out a recipe from Natalie Keng’s “Egg Rolls & Sweet Tea: Asian Inspired, Southern Style,” which came out earlier this year. Natalie’s book also touches on how Southern foodways influenced the dishes she grew up eating as a Chinese-American, so stay tuned for that.
Have a great rest of the week, all! 💗
Serves 4-5
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
½ teaspoon cumin seeds
2 tablespoons ghee
2 cups minced yellow onion (1 to 1½ large onions)
1 tablespoon minced ginger
1½ teaspoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 ¼ teaspoons garam masala
¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
2 ½ pounds collard greens, tough ribs and stems removed, leaves finely chopped (8 to 10 cups, from about 2 bunches)
1½ teaspoons salt
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon mustard seed oil or peanut oil
½ teaspoon amchur (dried mango powder)
½ teaspoon sugar
Toast the coriander seeds in a small, dry pan over medium heat for about 1 minute. Add the cumin seeds and toast, shaking the pan gently so that the seeds toast evenly and do not burn until both spices are fragrant, about 1 more minute. Remove from the heat and, when cool enough to handle, crush with a mortar and pestle or grind coarsely in a spice grinder or coffee grinder. Set aside.
Heat the ghee in a Dutch oven or other wide, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-low heat until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are caramelized, about 20 minutes. Cooking the onions low and slow until they caramelize is the key to this recipe; be patient and do not rush this step. You are looking for most of the liquid to cook out and for the onions to take on a caramel-brown color. They will break down to more of a paste consistency than individual pieces.
Once the onions have caramelized, add the ginger and garlic and cook, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes. Add the tomato paste, stir, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes more. Stir in the crushed coriander and cumin, garam masala, and turmeric and cook for 2 to 3 more minutes, until fragrant. Add ¾ cup water and stir, scraping up any bits that may have stuck to the bottom. At this point, you should have a richly fragrant brown paste in the bottom of the pot. Stir in the greens and salt. Mix very well to coat the greens in the onion and spice paste. Turn the heat down to low, cover, and cook until the greens have begun to soften and are no longer crunchy, about 20 minutes. They will wilt and reduce substantially. Stir in the cream, cover, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until the cream has thickened and the greens are cooked through. You may need to add a touch more water if the greens appear too dry.
Stir in the mustard oil, amchur, and sugar. Taste and season with additional salt if needed. Indian restaurants in the United States often serve a very smooth saag. If you prefer that smooth texture, blend the greens with an immersion blender before serving. Serve hot.
Recipe excerpted from “I Am From Here: Stories and Recipes from a Southern Chef” by Vishwesh Bhatt. Copyright © 2022. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.