Category: Cooking (Page 1 of 2)

Well, it turned out wonderfully!  It tastes really good. Here’s a photo of the sausage in the bags, I’ll get some more photos of the meat after slicing.

I was asked at the Christian Homekeeper facebook group yesterday how to cook collard greens. I think it’s something that many people would like to know, so here is my method.

First I wash those greens really well. Three or 4 times is not unusual. Since they are an agricultural product and grown in the great outdoors, they carry some soil and debris on them and that stuff won’t make your collards taste good.

I think collards are a beautiful green and they taste sort of similar to other brassica plants like cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, rutabaga, and turnip greens.

After washing them, I cut the big woody stems out of each stalk. Then I stack the leaves up and cut them into strips, then again into smaller pieces. How you cut them isn’t too important but great big pieces are hard to eat.

Collards cook down to about half the size they start out as. So you can over-pile your pot full of greens, fill your pan with water and they’ll cook down and fit the pan.

How To Season Collards

Like anything, seasoning collars is subject to taste. Here is how I like to season them.

I use a piece of smoked meat.  Sometimes it’s pork and sometimes it’s turkey.  For the past several yers it’s been smoked turkey wings.

For a very big pot of collards I use about 5 cloves of fresh garlic. You can use jarlic or even garlic powder if you like.

After you’ve added your smoked meat and garlic, one big onion, chopped, is next.

Then about 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 teaspoon black pepper and 1 teaspoon salt.

Then I add about 1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes.

Bring all this to a boil and then allow it to simmer for 2 or 3 hours, adding a little water if needed to keep the collards covered.

After 2 or 3 hours, they’ll probably be done and some people like to keep cooking them til they’re very soft. I like them to have just a little bite so I don’t cook them til they’re soft.

Taste them at this point and see if they need more seasoning. Sometimes I have added Cajun seasoning like Tony Chachere’s.

I pull all the cooked meat off the bone, discard the bones and add the meat back to the cooked collards.

These collards and a piece of cornbread is a meal for me!  If you have questions about cooking collards or other greens, just ask in the comments.

 

You’ve probably heard about pokeweed, poke salad, poke sallet. You may have eaten it. It has other names you might recognize: American nightshade, cancer root, inkberry, pigeon berry.

Now, this isn’t a complete treatise on Poke Weed, it’s just a few thoughts about the plant and how to prepare it to eat.

Poke is a native weed. Phytolacca americana can grow as tall as 10 feet. It’s berries have been used to make a red dye and it’s root is used in some cancer and HIV treatment research. There are tons of other health claims for poke weed but none are scientifically proven. Except two: poke contains large amounts of vitamins A and C and large amounts of the minerals iron and calcium and poke has a lymphatic cleansing property.

Because it contains these nutrients and cleanses the lymph system it has long been a spring time staple on the dinner table. Our foremothers knew that after a long winter eating dried foods and salted meats, this little weed was just the thing to refresh her family’s vitamin stores and give them a good start toward renewed health. A Spring Tonic, you might say.

You may have heard it called Poke Salad, but Poke Sallet is the correct name. A sallet is a kind of cooked salad according to Old English. We’ve just eaten poke for so long in this country, we modern folks now call it poke salad.

Poke is edible, and it tastes like a mild asparagus, but it has to be prepared correctly before you eat it. Poke contains the powerful irritant phytolaccine.  If poke isn’t prepared correctly it can cause stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting. Some people are sensitive to even touching the plant or berries. I’ve never had that problem, but I have heard of folks who have.

To prepare poke first start with tender shoots that have no purple color on them. I pick shoots for a few days sometimes to gather up enough for a meal or what Grandma called a “mess” of poke. That picture up there is my latest “mess” of poke.

After you’ve gathered up your shoots, wash them and remove all the debris and soil.

Bring a big pot of water to a rolling boil.

Chop up the shoots if desired, I seldom do but if they’re long you might want to chop them.

Place the shoots in the pot of boiling water.

Boil the shoots for 3 minutes. Drain the shoots and remove them to a plate while you boil another pot of water.

Place the shoots in the second pot of boiling water and boil for another 3 minutes.

Repeat the draining and boiling for a total of 3 boilings and drainings. If you’re sensitive to plant products and different foods, you might want to boil and drain the shoots up to 5 times. I just boil and drain three times.

To finish off the cooking after all the boiling and draining, cover the shoots with water, bring to a boil and add the seasonings of your choice. Salt and pepper are common as is a piece of smoked ham. Garlic and red pepper flakes are another tasty add-in. Let the shoots simmer with the seasonings until the meat is cooked and tender. If you don’t use meat just cook the shoots for as long as you would other cooked greens like turnips or mustard greens.

Don’t throw away that final cooking liquid. It’s called “Pot Likker” or “pot liquor”, and it is delicious with a piece of cornbread and the cooked poke. The pot likker is where many of those vitamins and minerals end up. When I was a child, Mother always gave me a little cup of the pot likker to drink.

Another way of cooking poke after the boiling treatment is to scramble an egg with the cooked shoots.

Do you cook and eat Poke Sallet?

Anyone can make bread. After all, people have been making bread for thousands of years. You can make bread, too! This is a very simple recipe for making a white bread. It can be used for loaf bread or rolls.

You can make bread by hand, without a bread maker or machine of any kind. That’s how people used to make it, and you can, too. It will take perseverance and lots of energy. You will need a heavy spoon for beating the ingredients until the dough gets too stiff to beat. Then you will turn it out onto the counter-top and knead the dough.

To knead, you will push your fists into the dough and push the dough forward. then you will grasp the dough that has been pushed forward and pull it down over the rest of the dough, pushing it into the rest of the dough. Do this over and over. Add flour if the dough is sticky, just a little at a time, until you have a smooth, elastic dough.  I will be using an electric kneader in these instructions, but they are perfectly suited for making bread by hand.

 

 

 

 

 

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups warm milk (about 110*F)
2 1/2 teaspoons yeast
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 heaping Tablespoon shortening or lard
2 Tablespoons salt
6 -7 cups bread flour
1 Tablespoon lecithin powder (helps the bread stay fresh longer but is optional)

I have been having lots of trouble with bread not rising lately, and it has been due to the yeast. Sometimes bread will rise one time and then not again, this is usually due to weak, almost dead, yeast. So, I’ve gone back to proofing my yeast. Here is how to do that.

Put the amount of yeast you are using in a teacup. Add a pinch of sugar and about 1/2 cup warm milk. Let it sit until you can see the yeast start to foam and bubble. This will take from one or two to 10 minutes. If it doesn’t foam and bubble, you know that your yeast is not going to make your bread rise. Discard it and go buy some new yeast.

First, preheat your oven to 500*F. This will be turned off later and used for the dough to rise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Proof your yeast as instructed above and let it sit in the cup until you have the other ingredients combined.

Combine the rest of the milk, sugar, lecithin if using, shortening/lard and salt. Add the proofed yeast/sugar mixture.

Add four cups of flour, one cup at a time, beating well. I use a dough hook from the very beginning, but you can start with a paddle and change to the hook if you like.

 

 

 

 

Now start adding the flour just 1/2 cup at a time. Depending on the weather, you may need from 6 to even 8 cups of flour for this recipe. Today I used just 5 1/2 cups. Knead the dough well between additions of flour.

As you add flour, look for the dough to stop being sticky, and watch for it to start pulling away from the sides of the pan. You may need to stop your machine and scrape the dough from the sides of the bowl a few times. You don’t have to add all the flour, just add enough that you have a soft, non-sticky dough.

 

 

 

 

 

Now allow the dough to knead for 10 minutes. If you are kneading by hand, you will knead it for 15-20 minutes, and that will depend on how strong and good you are at kneading.  🙂

While it is kneading, you can grease a large pan for the dough to rise in.

 

 

 

 

 

After it has kneaded for 10 minutes, you can see how smooth the dough is and how it has cleaned off the sides of the pan.

 

 

Take the dough out of the mixing bowl and shape it into a mushroom by folding the edges under, under, under all the way around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now grab the dough firmly and place the dough in the greased pan, top side down. Rub the dough around in the grease, then turn it over so that both the top and bottom will be greased.

 

Turn off your oven.  Place a clean cloth over the dough in the pan and place the pan in the oven. Leave the door cracked and allow the dough to rise until it is doubled in size. this can take from 30 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on your oven and the weather.

 

OK, now your dough is risen!

 

Preheat the oven to 325*F.

Grease two loaf pans.  I prefer smaller pans because the bread rises higher in them and I get big slices for sandwiches. As you make more bread, you can decide what kind of pans you like.  If you don’t have loaf pans you can use casserole dishes or even place the dough on a cookie sheet for a round loaf with lots of crust.

Take out the dough and divide it into two equal portions. I just pinch the dough into two portions, but if you prefer, you can pay the dough on the counter and cut it into two portions.

Shape each portion into a mushroom and pinch together the dough on the bottom of the mushroom.  Place each portion of shaped dough into a greased loaf pan.

Pierce the tops of the dough with a fork a few times. This allows air to flow through the bread and gives the tops a nice look when the bread is done.

Cover with a clean cloth and allow to rise until it is at least 1 inch above the pan.  If you are not using a pan, you should let the dough rise on a greased cookie sheet until it is doubled in size.  This rising is not done in the oven but on top of the oven, since it is nice and warm now.

Now place the risen pans of dough in the oven and bake for 25 minutes. When you take them out, leave the bread in the pans for 5 minutes.  While the bread is still in the pans, rub the tops and sides with butter, this makes the crust soft and delicious.

After 5 minutes, turn the bread out of the pans and allow to cool on a wire rack.  If you don’t have a wire rack, and you bake a lot, you really should get one. They are very helpful for cooking baked goods quickly and evenly.

 

Once the bread is cool enough to eat, you are going to have a hard time keeping people out of the kitchen, so go ahead and slice one loaf and serve it with butter and jam.

To store this bread, you must wait til it is cool, then wrap in paper or plastic. Without the lecithin it will last about 4-5 days on the shelf, but I don’t think your bread is going to be around that long.  🙂